The Paradox
by falafel-fiction
Summary: After Desmond changes the past so he doesn't take Flight 815, Charlie experiences strange visions of the island and realises that he is living out two different lives simultaneously. What will happen when these two existences finally collide? Co-fic.
1. PROLOGUE

**The Paradox**

**Summary**: Charlie chases a Scottish man through the rainy streets of London, which leads him to a fateful meeting in an antique shop.

**Characters**: Charlie/Mrs Hawking, mentions of Desmond.

**Rating**: PG

**Disclaimer**: Nope, I still do not own Lost.

**Authors Note**: It seems that rumours of my retirement have been greatly exaggerated! Let's say I'm retired to the same degree that Charlie is dead; meaning you may see me returning to Lost fanfic for the odd mysterious cameo and, who knows, maybe one day I'll come back in a big way.

**Dedication**: For **cylune9**who came up with the paradox theory and **pacejunkie** who wanted see it in fanfic form. This is also a tribute to Charlie's appearance in the S4 trailer and the hope that it may be a herald of a future resurrection. We can dream, right?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rainfall was pounding the London pavements while the grey skies rumbled up above. Charlie's feet splashed through the quickly forming puddles, his fringe hanging over his eyes in a dripping curtain. He stopped for a moment, swiping his wet hair aside and trying to focus on the man he was chasing. The Scottish man was streets ahead of him now, running like a spooked rabbit, shoving past pedestrians and darting through lanes of traffic. Charlie was seized by desperation. His legs started pumping again, harder this time. But he was by no means a fast sprinter and to make matters worse his guitar case kept slamming into people's knees forcing him to halt and make clumsy apologies. It wasn't long before the Scotsman was almost out of his sight. Charlie tried yelling to him – _"Wait! Please! How do you know me?!"_ – but he was so breathless his voice wouldn't carry.

_This is useless_, Charlie conceded, gradually slowing his pace. _I'm never gonna catch up with this feller. _His shoes were leaking now and his jeans were soaked up to his knees. His thick leather jacket was the only thing shielding his body from the merciless downpour. He needed to get out of the chill wind or he was going to make himself ill. If he caught a cold then he wouldn't be able to sing. If he couldn't sing then he couldn't make any money and if he couldn't make money then he would soon have go crawling back to his parent's house in Manchester and admit that his plans to find fame and fortune in the country's capital had been a miserable failure.

Charlie came to a reluctant halt beside a small antiques shop and decided to take shelter inside. A little silver bell jangled as he stepped through the door. He shuffled over to the glass cabinets and pretended to be browsing over the pieces of old jewellery. He knew that he wouldn't buy anything. The pitiful collection of notes and coins in his case would only just afford him supper. Besides there was only one ancient ring that Charlie had ever been interested in. And that ring was the birthright of his brother Liam.

"Wipe your feet..." said a voice.

Charlie startled and turned to see an owlish old lady standing behind the far counter. There was a curtained doorway behind her, but he hadn't heard it rustle. It felt as though the woman had just appeared out of the thin air. Now she stood there bold as brass with a fixed smile on her lips and a sharp glint of disapproval in her eyes.

"I…I'm sorry?" Charlie stammered.

"Clearly you don't have much money or any intension of making a purchase," the woman trilled. "If you're just loitering in my shop to keep out of the rain then you can at least show a little courtesy and not leave a trail of wet footprints over my carpet." Her smile became tighter and her eyes widened. "So wipe your sodding feet, boy!" she concluded, snappishly.

Charlie quickly retreated to the shop's entrance and placed his squelching trainers on the welcome mat. If it hadn't been pouring so hard he might have fled the shop. This prim old biddy was giving him the creeps.

"You're out of breath, I see..." she continued, studying him critically. "You haven't stolen a wallet, have you?" She looked him up and down, grimacing as if he were a bad taste in her mouth. "_Yes_...you have the look of a pickpocket," she said decidedly.

"_You_ have the look of a snooty old busybody," Charlie retorted, crossing his arms. "But I'll try not to hold it against you."

The woman laughed, seeming impressed. "Well then...we shall both have to prove there is more to us than appearances suggest."

Charlie frowned, shook his head and turned back to the window. The raving Scotsman was out in those sprawling wet streets somewhere and he knew something about Charlie. Most likely the two of them would never cross paths again. Maybe their strange encounter didn't mean anything after all. But for a moment there it had felt like something very important. Charlie at least needed to tell someone about it.

"I was chasing this Scottish bloke..." he began, haltingly. "He said that he knew me. He said something about…how we were on an island together. I thought he was a nutter at first. But then he predicted the rain. This rain! I mean...he said it was gonna start raining and...maybe he _did_ know something about me...something about my future...maybe he…"

The lady raised her hand to silence his confused wittering.

"Yes, of course…" she nodded as if Charlie were recounting a news item that she was already familiar with. "That man just saved your life."

Charlie blinked and spluttered. "I'm sorry…did you just say that he saved my life?" He shook his head at the absurdity of her suggestion. "Saved my life!" he repeated. "How the bleeding hell did he do that, missus?!"

"By talking to you," she answered curtly. "If the Scottish man hadn't spoken to you, then you would have taken shelter in the underground after the rain started. Then you would have caught a tube train back to the crummy little hostel where you are currently lodging. Then several years later you would have been involved in a plane crash and been left stranded on an island with that Scottish man." She paused and took a breath. "But instead you chased that man down the street and ended up here in my shop. And _that_ has made all the difference, Charlie."

He flinched, his eyes widening in shock and bewilderment. "How…how do you know my name? Is everybody a bloody psychic today?!"

The woman sighed, apparently finding Charlie's distress very trifling.

"Let me give you a piece of advice, boy. If you choose to take my advice then you will find your life on a very different path. One with a far better ending I assure you. And yes...this change may turn out to be very important for all of us."

"Err…okay," Charlie faltered, submitting to this weirdness. "And your advice _is_?"

"Don't take Flight 815," she instructed; her eyes stern and foreboding.

Charlie grinned stupidly. He glanced to the doorway at the back of the shop, now suspecting that there was a camera crew lurking behind its curtains. Maybe the old woman and the Scottish man were involved in some elaborate prank that was being played on him. Charlie decided he might as well play along with it for the time being. It was one way of getting himself on TV.

"Riiiight," he said, nodding mechanically. He tapped the side of his head. "I'll log that one away for future reference then..."

The old lady nodded too, seeming satisfied with his answer.

"Oh, one more thing…" she added, her smile lengthening. "On Christmas Eve in the year 2004 you will receive a phone call from a woman named Penelope Widmore. She will tell you that she has received a distress call from a young man named Charlie Pace who claims that he is stranded on an island following the crash of Flight 815."

Charlie stared at her in stupefaction. He ran this last statement over a second time in his mind. Nope, it still didn't make any sense.

"But I'm…I'm not going to this island anymore!" he protested, his confusion mounting. "I thought we had just settled this. I'm not gonna take this doomed flight so I sure as hell won't be crashing on any bloody island!!"

"Ah yes…this is the tricky part," the woman continued. "You see this little paradox is only occurring after you have been on the island for two months. The Charlie Pace who is on the island can't simply pop out of existence, though the universe has been making efforts to correct the anomaly. In fact the Charlie Pace on the island will drown shortly after speaking to Penny."

"Drown?" Charlie felt his blood running cold. Strangely this part of her surreal fortune telling made sense to him. He had been frightened of water ever since he was a child, but he had never been able to figure out where his phobia came from. Maybe it was here.

"Yes, such a pity," the old woman lamented. "He was a brave lad. He didn't deserve the cruel fate that he suffered. But it had to be done. The universe can't have two Charlie Pace's in existence at one time, can it..."

Charlie winced. "But why…why get rid of him and not me?"

"Because you have destiny too, boy. You must finish what your other self started. After the phone call you will join Penny Widmore's team. You will be responsible for bringing together a group of survivors who escaped from the island before they were supposed to. You will be the one who leads them back to their paths. And in the end you will get them rescued. You will do this for the young man who sacrificed his life for their rescue. You will do it for the girl and the baby that he left behind. And if you don't do those things Charlie Hieronymous Pace every single living person on that island will be killed."

Charlie could feel a pulse throbbing in his ears. His jaw opened to question her further, but he found that his voice had dried up. The woman behind the counter smiled serenely and gestured for him to leave her shop. Charlie turned to stare blankly through the glass window. It was no longer raining outside. The sun was peeping through the clouds.

"Wait!" Charlie managed to choke out. "What...what am I supposed to do now?!"

The old woman raised her hands in a shrug. "Whatever comes next..."

With those words, she slipped behind the curtain.

_TBC..._


	2. Chapter 1

Title: The Paradox

Authors: falafelfiction, sapphirechild and pacejunkie

Characters: Charlie/Claire, Liam, Penny, cameos from most of the rest of the Losties and numerous flashback characters

Rating: PG

Summary: A co-fic and long sequel story inspired by my Charlie/Hawkings seed story. Charlie chases a Scottish man through the rainy streets of London, which leads him to a fateful meeting in an antique shop. Six years later, he starts to experience strange dreams about being stranded on a mysterious island. As he discovers more about this island and its occupants, he begins to realise that he is living out two different lives simultaneously. What will happen when these two existences finally collide?

Disclaimer: Lost doesn't belong to any of the three of us (sadly). The Paradox theory belongs to cylune9 and pacejunkie.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had always been a habit of Charlie's to write on his hands. Since he was a kid he had carried his trusty sharpie with him at all times, ready to whip it out and scrawl on his skin if he really needed to remember something. The black ink would stain his hands for weeks following, ensuring that he didn't forget. So Charlie could still recall the things he had written some six years ago on that fateful rainy day in London. After his unsettling encounter with the old woman in the antiques shop he had fumbled for the pen in his pocket and made a hurried list.

- Flight 815  
- Penny  
- Christmas Eve

Charlie was certain there had been other important factors in her mysterious prophecies, but he had been reeling with confusion and those were the only details that stood out in his memory. He had been particularly careful to take note of the flight number. The old lady had assured him that this plane was destined to crash on an unknown island. So since that meeting every time Charlie took a plane trip whilst touring with the band, he had always checked the number on his ticket. Just in case. For years nothing had come of his nagging superstition. He had almost forgotten about it. That was until he found himself standing in Sydney airport, his eyes flicking nervously between his boarding pass and the notice board.

Flight 815: Sydney to Los Angeles

He had always promised himself he wouldn't take this flight. The trouble was, right now, he really needed to get on this plane. His manager had booked his ticket and was expecting his arrival in LA. He couldn't possibly stay in Australia. He had left Liam's house in a storm of righteous indignation so he really didn't fancy the prospect of crawling back to his big brother with his tail between his legs. But that is what he would have to do if he didn't board this flight. The sleazy tramp who had shared his heroin and his bed the night before had lifted the notes and traveller's checks from his wallet. He couldn't afford another stop in a hotel room. All he had now were his suitcase, his passport and a ticket for Flight 815.

Charlie took a breath and wondered if he really needed to make this choice. Maybe his management in LA would be prepared to pull some strings for him. He wandered over to the row of pay phones and called his agent, Eddie Darlton.

"Y'ello?" answered the typically smarmy American voice.

"It's me, Eddie..." Charlie began timidly.

"Pace? Good to hear from you, buddy! Hey, doesn't your plane leave soon?"

He swallowed. "Yeah, that's kinda what I'm calling you about. Listen...is there any chance we could switch my ticket to a later flight? I've woken up feeling really lousy this morning. It might be a stomach bug I've picked up. I don't think I can handle the long journey, you know..."

"You're sick?" His voice was edged with cynicism. "Sick in what way, Pace? I'm only asking because you and your band-mates have assured me that your little heroin honeymoon is over. I don't work with junkies, do you hear me? They're more trouble than their worth. Oh and another thing...I don't work with cry-babies either! So why don't you just take some peptol bismol and get your ass on that plane?"

Charlie squirmed and shuffled his feet. The last of his drug stash was tucked into his shoe, rubbing hard against his toe. Eddie sounded seriously pissed now. Charlie could only imagine how much madder he would be when he showed up in the States without Driveshaft's main draw-card.

"Listen Eddie, the truth is..." He swallowed, realising he was about to blow all his chances. "I couldn't convince Liam to come with me. So it's just me you're getting -- the lesser known Pace brother. I...I guess this means the tour is off, right?"

There was silence on the other end of the line. Charlie closed his eyes, half expecting Eddie to hang up on him. Two phones away from him a black guy was having a hushed argument with his mother. He chewed his nails and waited.

"Okay Pace..." Eddie said at length. "Just listen to me and don't sweat it. Truth is I like you. I think you've got some real underrated talent as a songwriter. So I'm gonna give you a break, kid. I'm gonna make you an offer you damn well can't refuse. If you come to LA then you can have your tour dates. Yeah buddy, even without Liam! I've heard your brother is a pain in the butt to work with anyway. So from now on you're gonna be the front man of this band – the singer, the lead guitarist, the one the girls are screaming for. We'll make you a star, kiddo. And all you have to do is get yourself on that plane...flight 815."

Charlie blinked in surprise and bewilderment. Eddie was offering him all his wildest dreams on a plate. This was an unbelievable stroke of luck. So why...why was there a feeling of dread creeping into his bones? He thought about the priests in the confessional booths who had always reminded him that it was his choice whether he gave into his temptations or not. Charlie had always wanted to make the right choices.

"Are you speechless, Pace?" Eddie sniggered. "I take it we have a deal then..."

Charlie chewed his lip. There came a call for passengers of Flight 815 to make their way to the departures lounge. Charlie watched as the people rose from their seats in the waiting room and filtered towards the terminal. There was a bald man in a wheelchair, an Asian woman clutching a white flower, a blonde girl in a pink jacket bickering loudly with the boy who walked beside her. A strange collection of travellers all bound for the same destination. He felt the old woman's voice echoing through his mind and somehow he knew it was true.

Every one of these people would be killed.

"What's it gonna be, Pace?" Eddie pressed him, impatiently.

Charlie opened his mouth, feeling like he was making the stupidest decision of his life.

"You'll have to stick your deal up your arse, Darlton..."

With that, he slammed down the phone and left the airport.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Charlie's nerves were feeling decidedly frayed after his conversation with Eddie, so by the time he managed to retrieve his bags and hail a taxi he was absolutely itching for a fix. He abstained only with the knowledge that he was going to have to swallow his pride and go to Liam for help and he was certain that his brother wouldn't appreciate him turning up on his doorstep as high as a kite.

Despite feeling bitter about having to go crawling back to him again so soon after he'd stormed out, Charlie knew that with his lack of funds, it was the smartest thing to do. All he'd have to say is that he'd missed the flight, he needed a place to stay, and then in the morning he could catch another flight back to Los Angeles. No big deal.

Liam's jaw dropped when he opened the door to find his younger brother standing there with his bags. Under other circumstances Charlie would have no doubt made some light hearted wisecrack about catching flies but when he opened his own mouth, his own tongue seemed to shrivel up and he merely gaped stupidly at his brother in turn, totally lost as to what he should say to him.

"Charlie?" Liam said finally, looking utterly gobsmacked.

"Hi," Charlie finally croaked out, feeling about a million shades of awkward. After a long silence in which Liam stared at him, speechless, Charlie cleared his throat and tried again. "I uh…I missed my flight."

Liam continued to stare for a moment and then he bent to pick up one of Charlie's bags.

"Well," he said. "Well come on in then."

"Um…" Charlie hesitated and Liam finally looked past him and saw the taxi, still waiting in the driveway for the fare. Liam pinched the bridge of his nose for a long, agonising moment, and then he put Charlie's bag down again.

"I'll go get my wallet," he said in a world weary sort of way.

The atmosphere at the dinner table was tense that night. Karen seemed inordinately delighted that Charlie had decided to stay and Megan was fascinated by her uncle as only a toddler can be with a new person. Liam however was tight lipped and every time he saw Charlie's hands start to twitch he winced slightly.

After dinner, Karen took Megan up for a bath before bed whilst Liam and Charlie cleared the table.

"So are you going to stay?" Liam asked abruptly, not really looking at his brother as he stacked plates in the dishwasher.

"Probably not," Charlie admitted quietly, trying his hardest to keep his hands steady as he picked up a glass and began to rinse it under the tap. "I would've stayed in a hotel only I lost all my travellers cheques and pretty much all of my Australian money."

Liam was silent for a moment and then he smirked. "Who stole it from you?"

Charlie grinned wryly, realising that his brother had seen right through his lie. "Some girl I picked up in a bar."

"Of course," Liam said shrewdly but then he changed his tone. "Look, Charlie…"

"I'll be gone tomorrow," Charlie said quickly and Liam's facial expression melted from one of expectant hope to disappointment. "I might need a hand with the taxi fare to the airport but that's all. I'll refund my ticket and buy another one and then I'll be out of your hair for good."

"I didn't know that you could refund plane tickets if you missed the flight," Liam frowned.

"Well," Charlie invented wildly. "I checked with the blokes at Oceanic and they said that they should be able to do it. It wasn't my fault that I missed the plane – it was just an unlucky coincidence."

Liam was silent and Charlie sighed.

"Look," he apologised. "I'm sorry I had to come back again but…"

"I just thought you might've reconsidered," Liam said quietly, not meeting his eyes. "I thought that maybe you were going to let me help you after all."

Charlie was silent and Liam shook himself.

"Never mind I guess. I mean if you don't want to then I can't…" Liam hesitated for a moment and then sighed before changing the subject rather abruptly. "Charlie…can you do one thing for me?"

"Sure," Charlie said genially, expecting his brother to tell him to be careful, to look after himself when he went back to America. He could easily promise that to him even whilst knowing full well that he wasn't going to follow through with it. Hell, he'd promised Liam more than once that he would get help but he hadn't followed through then either. It was altogether too easy to make people believe that you really wanted to get better. "Anything Liam – I owe you anyway."

"It's just…while you're staying here…" Liam said tentatively. "I don't want you using that stuff in my house."

Charlie deflated slightly. He hadn't expected Liam to say that – he'd almost been waiting for his older brother to express concern over his wellbeing. Even if Charlie ignored his advice, it was nice to know that despite everything, his brother really did still care about him.

"I won't," he muttered, carefully moving his feet so that the shoe he'd hidden his stash in was behind the other one. "I don't even have any on me," he lied. "I used it all last night."

Liam eyed him sharply for a moment but then he nodded. "Okay mate. Sorry to be so suspicious but I just don't want that stuff in my house. Not near my family. Especially Meghan."

"Of course," Charlie said, squirming guiltily and trying desperately not to. "I understand."

Liam smiled then and grasped Charlie's shoulder firmly.

"Come on," he said. "You'll be in for a rough night if you haven't fixed since yesterday. You go have a shower and get yourself settled in – I'll get you some painkillers and a glass of water. An early night should do you some good."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Charlie's guilt at having lied to his brother about the heroin was enough to make him abstain from having a fix before he went to bed. Instead, he had a long, hot shower and thought very seriously about how the hell he was going to get back to Los Angeles again.

He hadn't just lied to Liam about the drugs because he felt bad – it was also because he was seriously considering on-selling them in order to buy himself his plane ticket home. Oceanic had made it very clear that he wasn't able to refund his ticket and in the end he had just given up and stormed out. Now however, he was beginning to feel a little panicky. He didn't really have a lot of heroin left – just the baggie in his shoe and another, slightly smaller one in his guitar case. Even if he amped the price up he still probably wouldn't be able to get enough money to get him back to Los Angeles, let alone England.

Charlie swallowed down the aspirin that had been left on his bedside table dry and then slipped under the covers with a sigh. He would sort everything out in the morning. For now he was just glad to have a place to stay and a bed to sleep in – even though his relationship with his brother was a bit strained and his withdrawal symptoms weren't making him feel all that terrific.

Despite his reservations about the strength of the painkillers that he had been given, the aspirin actually seemed to help a little after a while. After several hours of lying awake and worrying, Charlie finally fell into a fitful sleep that slowly became deeper and deeper until…

_He was in a tiny cubicle, an airplane bathroom he thought, bent over the toilet bowl with a baggie in his hand, the rush of the drug in his veins. It felt like some demented game where you had to drop something in the exact centre of the toilet. Charlie's hand shook as he tried to get the drugs centred enough to drop it into the bowl and not onto the floor. _

And then HE WAS AIRBORNE.

The world was chaotic, the door fell open and he was on the floor…no wait…and he rolled aside, a millisecond away from being crushed by a food cart and he was up and running, slipping, tripping, falling over his own feet and the whole bloody plane was shaking and _**what the hell was going on?!**_

An oxygen mask over his nose, the whole damn thing shaking and creaking and breaking apart as he watched in abject terror and then the world was on fire as he crawled through the sand, as he slipped and stumbled and fell to his knees again…

A heavily accented voice came from a dark stranger beside him, "You'd think they would have come for us by now."  
  
_Charlie looked down at his fingers and saw the word FATE penned there on scraggly pieces of tape and then he was walking. It was cold and dark out tonight – his hoodie was zipped up all the way to his chin as he stumbled around, his shoes sliding against the sand and his eyes scanning his surroundings. _

There were fires. Lots of small fires (campfires he thought) with people clustered around them. And through the darkness he could just make out piles of twisted wreckage, sharp metallic shapes, deformed and bent and broken. Above him was a dark night sky, scattered with a thousand sparkling lights – stars.

And then, right before him he saw something that was impossible.

Or rather, he saw some_**one **__who was impossible. It was a girl – quite probably the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He stopped and stared, frozen in his amazement. She was practically radiant in the firelight, her long blonde hair sparkled and her skin glowed as she casually pulled a blanket over her stomach… _

It was stretched tight like a drum, round and swollen and wonderful. She couldn't have been any less than eight months along – far too pregnant to be travelling on a plane. Charlie's breath caught in his throat and he began to walk towards her. His head felt light, almost as though his brain was two steps behind his body. Close to, he could see the swell of her belly even more clearly (even beneath the blanket), he could see the waves and wispy curls in her hair and the ugly red scrape on her chin that marred her otherwise porcelain skin…

"This must be a dream," he tried to say, wonderingly. Instead he heard himself greet her and offer her a blanket. The night spun dizzyingly around him and suddenly he was sitting with her, warming his hands over the fire.

"So," he heard himself say to her. His hearing seemed somewhat muted within the dream, like listening to somebody talking underwater. "First plane crash?"

At these words, Charlie felt a cold shudder ripple through his body.

The girl smiled sarcastically at him. "What gave it away?"

"Ah you can always spot the newbies," he joked and despite himself, Charlie felt a feeling of warmth rush through him when the girl laughed. "We're gonna be okay, you know."

The night gave another dizzying swirl then, and he realised that her hand was in his, soft and warm as he shook it.  
  
_"Nice to meet you, Charlie," The girl was saying to him, smiling as she looked into his eyes. She had pale eyes he noticed, but the dark rings around the irises showed up the blue in them even in the muted red glow from the fire. _

"It's nice to meet you," he returned. 

And then he opened his eyes with a sharp intake of breath.

For a long moment Charlie simply lay there, staring at (but not really seeing) the ceiling. Closing his eyes, he recalled each feature he remembered from the dream girl – from the line of her cheekbones to her sweet smile. Her face came to him easily – it almost seemed burnt into his memory – and he didn't think that he would have been able to get those eyes of hers out of his mind even if he tried.

Finally rolling onto his side, Charlie surveyed the alarm clock with only a mild amount of interest. It was still early – early enough that Liam might not be up yet. He crawled out of bed, still feeling a bit fuzzy in the head from his dream. Normally when he was in withdrawal his dreams were much worse than that. Granted the plane crash bit had been nerve wracking after his experience the previous day but the bit with the girl had been pretty damn nice.

He found himself thinking about her voice as he stumbled downstairs in a daze, wrapping one of Liam's spare bathrobes around himself as he did so. He'd always liked Australian accents – not the really broad ones – more like the one that the girl in his dream had, softer and somehow gentler. Her mouth had formed lovely shapes around all her vowels as she spoke – especially when she had said his name.

He was still reminiscing on his dream when, to his intense surprise, he realised that he could actually hear an Australian accent speaking out loud – a girl too – from within the kitchen. Creeping in from the direction of the formal dining room, Charlie realised that Liam was drinking a cup of tea as he watched the morning news on a small television set in the corner. Charlie felt somewhat disappointed. Somehow he'd hoped that maybe he was still asleep and that the girl from his dream might have been downstairs in the kitchen waiting for him.

"What's happening in the world this morning?" he asked out loud in an attempt to shake himself out of the realm of his subconscious.

Liam jumped and whirled around, a hand over his heart.

"Charlie!" he let out a relieved breath of air. "Bloody hell! You scared me."

"Sorry," Charlie said, peering past his brother at the television. There was a female reporter onscreen looking very serious, the banner behind her saying 'Plane Goes Missing in Pacific'. Charlie abruptly pushed past his brother and turned the volume up as high as it could go.

"…lost radio contact approximately four hours into a routine flight from Sydney to Los Angeles," the presenter was saying in a very serious voice. "It is unknown yet where exactly the plane is and if it has – indeed – crash landed. All we know at this point is that it has been lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and that the plane is unreachable via radio contact. Oceanic Airlines released a statement early this morning saying that they have already mounted an extensive sea and air search which will hopefully recover the plane and all of its passengers as safely and as quickly as possible."

The screen flicked back to the main presenters and Charlie blinked.

"Thank you for bringing us that breaking story Natalie," the woman said before turning to her co-host. "Hopefully they'll be able to find all those poor souls from flight 815 as quickly as possible."

"Well I certainly hope so Melissa," the man returned before he turned back to the cameras and signed off with, "We'll be right back with more news in just a moment."

Charlie turned the television set off with trembling fingers and then leant unsteadily against the kitchen bench, trying to slow his rapidly beating heart.

"Was that…" Liam began tentatively and then cleared his throat before trying again. "Wasn't that…your flight Charlie? Oceanic 815?"

Charlie nodded mutely, still staring at the blank television screen, dumbstruck with horror.

"Bloody hell," Liam ran a hand through his hair and then repeated himself. "Bloody hell!"

"I know," Charlie murmured blankly.

"But just…" Liam shook his head in amazement and then grabbed Charlie's shoulders. "Bloody sodding hell Charlie! You're lucky that you missed that flight!

"Well…" Charlie said evasively. "I didn't really…miss my flight yesterday." Liam stared at him, not comprehending. "I didn't get on it on purpose."

Liam's jaw dropped in amazement. "Why not?"

"I…" Charlie paused, wondering if he should tell Liam about the antique store lady's premonition from all those years ago. But looking into his brother's over bright eyes he somehow knew that it would be too much for him to take in right now. Instead, he said, "Something just didn't feel right about it."

"Well you were right," Liam said, his voice thick. "You might've died when it crashed if you'd been…if you hadn't…"

"I know."

"Jesus…" Liam ran a hand through his hair and then, to Charlie's great surprise, he wrapped his arms around his younger brother in a fierce hug. "I'm sorry I yelled at you yesterday mate. I never would have been able to forgive myself if the last thing I'd said to you was…"

"Don't think about it Li," Charlie said gruffly, but he could feel that his body trembling – and not just from his withdrawal. "I didn't get on it, I'm okay."

"Are you still going to go back to LA?" Liam asked, finally pulling back.

Charlie's stomach flooded with dread at the mere thought of getting on a plane again – he remembered the scream of metal on metal and the heat of the fire from his dream and found himself shaking his head, his hands trembling in earnest now.

"You'll stay?" Liam pressed, hardly daring to believe. "You'll let me help you?"

"Well there's nothing for me back in America now," Charlie managed to say. "Eddie offered me a solo career and everything and I still couldn't bring myself to get on the plane."

"Maybe…" Liam paused and a smile began to creep onto his face. "Maybe you weren't meant to get on that plane because you're finally ready to do something different with your life." Charlie nodded slowly, considering his brothers words. "Maybe you're ready to move on."

"Maybe I am," Charlie said but then abruptly buried his face in his hands. "Christ Liam…is it really worth it? I feel bloody awful already and it's only been a day since I've fixed."

"It's worth it," Liam said seriously, squeezing Charlie's shoulder. "Like I said yesterday, the clinics here are really good. Go have a shower and get dressed, I'll drive you down first thing today and we'll get you all set up okay?"

"Okay," Charlie mumbled into his hands and then turned to leave. Liam was rinsing his coffee mug when Charlie turned back to him again. "Liam?"

"Yeah?"

"I lied yesterday," Charlie said guiltily and Liam looked up from the sink in surprise. "I couldn't get a refund for my ticket. I was going to use my remaining stash to pay my way back to LA. I've still got a baggie upstairs in my shoe and another stash in my guitar case."

For a moment, Charlie thought that Liam might get angry at him – his eyes certainly flashed with barely hidden menace. But then he merely nodded, tight lipped. "You haven't used?"

"Not here," Charlie promised. "I wouldn't do that to you – not after you asked me. But Liam," his older brother was listening intently to every word that he said. Charlie took a deep breath. "I need you to help me get rid of it. Before I try to…"

"Have one last fix," Liam finished grimly. "Come on then. We'll flush it – together."

The baggies swirled around the porcelain bowl in an erratic dance as Charlie and Liam watched – the former with a heavy sense of dread upon him. He held himself still, urging himself not to lunge at the bowl, to pluck out the waterlogged bags for one final, blissful hit...

There was a gurgle as they disappeared and then, suddenly, there was a warm weight across his upper back – Liam had put an arm around his shoulders.

"Well done baby brother," he said quietly. "I always knew you could do it."

Charlie trembled with the loss as he glanced sideways at his brother. He felt pathetic – but then he'd seen Liam do some pretty radical things to get a fix. If anyone would understand the sense of despair and panic that was setting in, it would be his brother.

"Let's get going shall we?" Liam prodded gently, steering him firmly out of the bathroom. "The sooner we can get you down to the clinic the better you'll feel."

"Yeah," Charlie agreed with a shaky sigh. "Yeah okay."

TBC


	3. Chapter 2

**Characters**: Charlie, Liam, Karen, Meghan and therapist (OC). Plus mentions of Locke, Claire, Jack and Ethan.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After his first week of withdrawal Charlie realised one of the main things motivating him to get clean was his desire to be done with rehab. If a slow gruelling detox was what it took to put an end to this excruciating and demeaning experience, then he was prepared to battle through it. Rehab was like running a long distance marathon that required him to jump through many hoops and over many hurdles before he could even see a glimpse of the finishing line. He had to run this race naked and exposed with a bunch of strangers gawking at him and shaking their heads.

Charlie had been put on a course of methadone, but it only served to take the sharpest edge off his ordeal which was compounded by the patronising counselling sessions and tedious lectures that he had to attend every week. He didn't feel like he could stomach much more of this '12 steps' bollocks. In his head Charlie had reduced the twelve steps to a simpler three step process: Step 1) admit to yourself that you are worthless bloody scum; Step 2) admit to everyone else that you are worthless bloody scum; and, Step 3) devote your life to making amends for being worthless bloody scum. That really seemed to be the gist of it. Charlie's self esteem was so low that he was submitting willingly to the formula.

The other thing that kept him going was Liam's unwavering support. Charlie had never felt such encouragement from his older brother. It gave him strength when he needed it most. Still he could have done with a little less of Liam's reminiscing about his own withdrawal. His stories were enough to make Charlie want to run away screaming. He shuddered at Liam's descriptions of the cold sweats, the headaches, the muscular cramps and the itchy blood.

His brother told him the worst part was the broken sleep and the nightmares. Charlie had to agree with him there. His dreams that week had been more vivid and disturbing than anything he had experienced. There were his dark dreams of being chased by a roaring creature made of black smoke that shook the trees around him. Then there were his squeamish dreams where he was forced to stand still while a swarm of bees crawled over his clammy trembling skin.

Liam had laughed grimly and assured Charlie that being chased by monsters or attacked by insects were among the textbook delusions that recovering drug addicts suffered with. Liam handed Charlie his copy of William Burroughs 'Naked Lunch', patted him on the back and warned him that this was what he was in for during the next few months.

Every three days Charlie was asked to share his dreams with a psychologist at the rehab clinic. In today's session Charlie was telling his therapist about the bald guy with the scar over his eye -- the man who Charlie liked to call 'the Great White Hunter'.

"The hunter..." he began haltingly, "the hunter tells me that he is gonna let me ask him for my drugs three times. On the third time he is going to give them to me. He says it's important that I have a choice. And there's...there's a boar caught in a net behind him. The hunter walks over to the pig and cuts its throat. It makes a terrible squealing sound. I look away and..." He fell silent and shrugged. "That's all I can remember."

His therapist frowned, pursing his lips. "This hunter...does he resemble your father at all?"

Charlie rolled his eyes. Why did these headshrinkers always want to read 'daddy issues' into your dreams?

"I guess he looks a bit like my dad. They are both bald guys...with stern faces."

_But this man isn't my father_, Charlie protested to himself. _He's a completely different person – and he's real!_

"Your brother Liam has told us that your father was a butcher," the therapist remarked. "It's interesting to me that when you see this bald man in your dreams he is often killing or skinning boars." He tipped his head, sympathetically. "I understand that you and your brother had a very troubled relationship with your father. He had wanted you both to carry on his trade. He didn't approve of your musical aspirations..."

"The hunter liked my music!" Charlie countered with the sudden remembrance. "He said that he recognised me from my band. He said he had both my albums. He promised me that if I handed him my drugs then he would find my guitar..."

The psychiatrist sighed and smiled at him in a kindly fashion.

"Charlie, I think what this dream is telling you is that you would gladly trade your heroin for your father's love and acceptance. I think it has been haunting you for a long time that he took such a strong disliking to your chosen career path."

Charlie flushed. "Yeah...I guess that makes sense."

The shrink leaned forward, still smiling. "Don't be ashamed, Charlie. Part of rehabilitation is working out what personal issues lie at the root of your drug problem. Let's talk some more about that other man who is helping you. What did you call him...the heroic doctor?" He chucked for a moment over Charlie's childish nicknames. "Now in our last session I asked you to draw me a picture of this man..."

Charlie nodded and took out his notebook. Drawing pictures and keeping dream diaries was part of the homework given to him by the clinic. It made him feel like he was five years old again. He opened his jotter on the page where he had drawn a crude sketch of the doctor. He was a tall man with a lean muscular build and handsome features. He would have been clean cut were it not for the wild tattoos that covered one of his arms.

The therapist's eyes flashed when he saw the picture. He smiled knowingly.

"Now...who would you say this man looks like...?"

Charlie sighed, realising the answer that he was fishing for.

"I guess he looks kinda like Liam..." he conceded.

_But he's not Liam_, he brooded quietly to himself. _He's this other guy..._

"A more idealised version of Liam perhaps?" the shrink said considerately. "An older brother figure who is capable of looking after you and helping you through your withdrawal sickness. Tell me...did you dream about the doctor again last night?"

Charlie nodded. "In my dream...I'm crawling down this narrow tunnel. The doctor is trapped inside this dark cave. His arm is injured. There isn't much air. We are trapped together and we think we are going to die. But then I see a little shaft of light. I start digging towards this light, out of the cave and..."

His sentence faded into a pause. His therapist was already nodding sagely.

"Yes Charlie, of course..." he said gently. "You and Liam were trapped together in a very dark place for a long time. It could have been the death of both of you. Isn't it interesting that it is you who finds the way out of the dark cave and saves the doctor?" He raised his eyebrows. "I know that you always wanted to help your brother, Charlie. Liam has confessed to us that he was only able to make a fresh start because he stole from you. He was able to recover because of you. And now you are hoping he will return the favour and help you to get clean. Am I right, Charlie?"

He swallowed. Listening to the shrink's analysis made it all seem so simple. He remembered how the doctor had given him an aspirin and told the rest of the camp he had the flu. The doctor was always looking out for him...just like Liam had promised to.

"Do not be disturbed by these dreams, Charlie. They are the minds way of telling you that you want to get better."

"I do want to get better..." Charlie affirmed. "I want to get clean...for her."

The therapist drew a tantalised breath and glanced down at his notes.

"I see. I'm guessing that this is the pregnant girl you keep referring back to?" Charlie nodded quickly, earning yet another patronising smile from the shrink. "Tell me again, Charlie...what is it that you like so much about this girl?"

He shrugged bashfully, shifting in his chair. He was unwilling to state the obvious reasons; that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, that he felt like he was falling in love with her. His fingers twitched restlessly under the table.

"I dunno...I worry about her. She sits alone on the beach every day, scribbling in her diary. It's like the other people are scared of her… or, more like they are scared of the responsibility. Her baby will be coming soon. She needs somebody to take care of her. A few days ago she fainted because of the heat. So now I bring her a bottle of water every morning." He sighed. "I just want to be there for her...if she needs me."

Charlie raised his head. His therapist's expression had become very serious.

"Charlie, I think this pregnant girl represents something very important to you. She represents what you desire. You want a wife and a child like your brother, Liam. You want a family to take care of. This target is within your reach, Charlie. You've told me that you had a girlfriend and regular work in London for a time. The only reason you lost these things is because of your drug problem. Once you have recovered there will be nothing to stop you finding a nice girl and a steady job. You will have so many opportunities. I think this is precisely the goal you should be focusing on..."

Charlie's eyes brightened. "So...so I should keep focusing on the pregnant girl?"

The shrink's smile wavered. "Well...not that girl, obviously. You must remember, Charlie, she isn't real. She only exists in your mind. But you should focus very strongly on what she represents. Let her be a beacon to you – a light at the end of the tunnel."

Charlie nodded rapidly. The lesson of the day was clear; if he got himself cleaned up and healthy, then he could look forward to having a girlfriend, a family, a normal life. Charlie really did want to focus his energies on this goal. There was only one problem. He knew that the pregnant girl was real. And as long as this girl remained in his dreams there would be no other woman who could hold a candle to her.

He rose to his feet and made his way to the door. Their session was finished for the day.

"Oh Charlie, one more thing..." his therapist called to him.

He turned nervously, still hoping the man might tell him these dreams were more than his drug-addled delusions.

"Liam has told us how you were almost caught up in that terrible plane crash," he stated solemnly. "I wanted to ask you not to dwell on this too much. These tragic events happen every day. They are just random accidents and it was only a random choice that prevented you from being involved. Count yourself lucky if you like. But don't read too much into it. There is no such thing as fate, Charlie..."

His stomach clenched. Part of him wanted to believe the shrink...

In his heart he knew that he was wrong.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was just over a week and a half since he had arrived in Sydney and Charlie was making a batch of sandwiches for lunch when the cravings hit him.

Charlie had somewhat lost his appetite since he'd gone into rehab – Liam had said it was perfectly normal and reassured him that he'd get it back in time. Despite all the tasty offerings in his brother's kitchen however, Charlie had actually started to lose weight – he didn't seem to be able to keep much down and there were a lot foods that he couldn't even smell without feeling ill.

Which is why he was so surprised that when he opened the jar of peanut butter to spread on the sandwiches he got distinctly light headed and his mouth was suddenly watering like Niagara falls had decided to come cascading over his tongue. He swallowed heavily and smacked his lips as he spread the condiment carefully across the bread. Even Meghan seemed to be watching him strangely from her high chair as he practically drooled all over the kitchen bench. After he'd cut Meghan's sandwich into triangles and then cut the crusts off (the way she liked them) he put her plate in front of her and she began to eat her lunch in the sort of clumsy, endearing way that only toddlers can achieve.

"What culinary delights have we got today?" Karen asked, entering suddenly and beginning to make her own sandwich. "Ooh peanut butter..."

While she sat down, Charlie surreptitiously loaded the knife up again and slathered a second, thicker layer of peanut butter onto his own bread before taking a seat across the table from his sister-in-law. He set eagerly to his own sandwich and before he knew it, it was all gone. Disappointed, he headed back into the kitchen to make himself a second sandwich, once again slathering liberal amounts of peanut butter onto the bread.

"Somebody's hungry today," Karen noted with amusement and Charlie shrugged, idly tickling Meghan as she ate.

"I seem to have developed a weird craving for peanut butter. Who am I to argue with my stomach?"

"Peanut butter is Meghan's favourite," Karen said, smiling at her giggling daughter. To prove her mothers point, she beamed at Charlie, the sticky condiment smeared all over her bright face and on her hands. "She's always loved it."

"I like it too," Charlie said thickly around a mouthful of sandwich. "Liam and I once ate it straight out of the jar and mum caught us and sent us to bed without any supper." Karen laughed and Charlie grinned back at her.

"I'm just glad that you've got your appetite back again," Karen admitted. "Even Liam was worried for a day or two."

"Well," Charlie shrugged. "I've pretty much lived off nothing except bread, water and methadone for over a week now so I'm hardly surprised. I might've just faded away to nothing if I wasn't too careful."

"Well if peanut butter is your thing at the moment then you just eat as much of it as you want," Karen said graciously. "We can always buy more."

"Thanks Karen," Charlie said, rising from his seat once again. He hesitated for a moment, then, blushing deeply, he headed back to the counter and began to make himself a third sandwich. Karen merely laughed it off as she went to stack her plate in the dishwasher and then began to help feed Meghan the last few pieces of her own, rather decimated sandwich.

"So how's your sleep been going?" Karen asked as Charlie sat down again. "Are you still having nightmares?"

"Not so much at the moment," Charlie said. "Thankfully. I've actually been dreaming more about…her lately." Karen looked up, intrigued and Charlie felt a blush spread up his cheeks. "You know," he said, trying not to grin and failing dismally. "The pregnant girl?"

"Ooh really?" Karen grinned at him. "Do tell!"

Charlie stared down at his sandwich so that Karen couldn't see the silly grin that had settled on his face as he began to speak.

"Well…we were doing her washing down on this beach. I was doing most of the work because she couldn't bend down enough – and she was wearing this adorable bucket hat to stop her face from getting burnt."

"Cute," Karen said. "What else?"

"Not much," Charlie shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich. "I was trying to convince her to move somewhere safer – to some caves or something. I said that the beach was too sunny for her but she wouldn't listen to me, said she wanted to stay there for when we all got rescued."

"And you couldn't convince her to go with you?" Karen looked troubled. "Does that mean that you're getting discouraged? Do you feel like you're not going anywhere?"

"I dunno what it means," Charlie scratched his head and sighed. "But then I was walking around the beach looking for something. I just kept on thinking 'if I can find this for her then she'll come with me to the caves'. But I just couldn't find it."

Karen touched his arm sympathetically. "Don't worry Charlie. The dream is probably just a projection of your insecurities about being able to stay clean or something equally simple. You just have to believe in yourself. We all do."

"Yeah," Charlie smiled thinly. "I know. Thanks."

"You're welcome," Karen smiled at him. "Thank you for making lunch for Meghan by the way – I was unloading the washing machine. I don't suppose you'd watch her while I hang it out? She always gets under my feet."

"Sure," Charlie said. "We'll go watch cartoons or something."

"Put on 'Finding Nemo'," Karen instructed as she headed for the back door. "She loves that movie."

"Sounds like a plan," Charlie stood and picked Meghan up out of her high chair. "Come here beautiful girl – you've got to go watch cartoons with your Uncle Charlie."

Meghan clung to his neck blissfully and Charlie felt a surge of affection for her until he realised that she was actually reaching for the remainder of his sandwich. "Hey!" he protested, snatching it out of her reach. Meghan stared up at him with wide, innocent eyes and then reached out for his sandwich again.

"I think not," Charlie carried Meghan over to the kitchen bench. "I'll make you your own if you want another one but you're not having mine." When he went to take another slice of bread out of the packet however, Meghan started to pout and instead made grabby hands towards the jar of peanut butter. "What?" he picked up the jar and let her take it from him. "You just want the peanut butter?"

"Yeh!" Meghan nodded and Charlie abandoned his sandwich with a sigh. "Well," he said heavily. "I suppose we can have some. Just don't go telling your mum that I'm teaching you bad habits."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"He ended up eating four jars!" Karen was trying her best not to laugh too much but Liam certainly wasn't helping matters and Charlie was red in the face from the effort of keeping his mirth under control. "I came into the lounge room and he was practically in a coma on the couch with Meghan next to him watching 'Nemo' – both of them stuffed to bursting and there were empty jars all over the floor. It was absolutely _adorable_. I wish I'd had a camera!"

"Charlie..." Liam began, still laughing. "Charlie, you do realise that you're a recovering _drug addict_ right? You're not _pregnant_."

"My sudden cravings make even less sense to me than they do to you guys," Charlie told them both, shaking his head in amazement. "I even _dreamt_ about peanut butter! Or at least I daydreamed about it – I'm not entirely sure that I was completely asleep. I brought some to the pregnant girl – oh! And I managed to convince her to move to the caves with me too Karen!"

"Oooh did you?" Karen gushed. "That's wonderful Charlie!"

"Caves?" Liam frowned, confused. "What caves?"

"I dunno," Charlie shrugged. "Apparently it's safer there or something. Whatever. The point is that there was a positive outlook to the dream right?"

"True," Liam grinned. "Your headshrinker will be thrilled."

"I'm sure he will," Charlie grinned. "I'm just glad that I've stopped dreaming about monsters to be honest."

"I told you it'd get easier," Liam said encouragingly. "Didn't I?"

"Yeah," Charlie said earnestly. "You did. And if it wasn't for your support – both of you – I think I would've already given up by now."

Liam waved away his praise, embarrassed. "I'm just doing what I should have done ages ago."

"Nemo!" Meghan demanded suddenly and all the adults turned to her.

"Not tonight little one," Karen said. "You need to have a bath before I tuck you into bed."

"Nemo?" Meghan pouted as her mother picked her up out of her chair.

"Can you two please do the dishes?" Karen requested around her daughters flailing limbs. "By the time I've put this one to bed it'll be just about bed time for me too – I'm wrecked."

"Sure," Liam stood and planted a kiss on his wife's lips before smoothing down Meghan's hair. "I might stay up a while yet but I'll give her a kiss goodnight if you call me when you're tucking her in."

"Okay," Karen went to leave but Meghan reached out for Charlie and began to make quiet noises of protest. "I think she wants a cuddle," Karen rolled her eyes. Charlie stood uncertainly and allowed Meghan to put her small arms around his neck.

"Nu-nigh!" she said cheerfully, planting a sloppy kiss on Charlie's cheek. He grinned as she was carried forcibly from the room by her mother, waving all the way. He waved back and then turned back to the task at hand.

"You seem in much better spirits today," Liam noted as they cleared away the table together. "Is it because you've started eating again?"

"I dunno what it is," Charlie said, shaking his head, still unable to wipe the smile from his face. "But I just…feel really happy today. Maybe it's because I've been spending so much time with Meghan."

Liam smiled. "She's like a little ray of sunshine isn't she?"

"Absolutely," Charlie agreed. "She's got a beautiful nature."

"Just like her mother," Liam said fondly.

_Just like the girl from my dreams_, Charlie thought wistfully.

Once they'd finished cleaning up Liam asked Charlie if he wanted to stay up a while and watch some television but Charlie politely declined.

"Cheers Li but I think I might just pack it in for today," he squeezed his older brothers shoulder. "I don't want to push my luck by having a bad night sleep. I'll probably be grumpy again in the morning if I stay up."

"Well if you change your mind I'll be down here for a while yet," Liam said distractedly, his eyes fixed on the opening credits to some sort of sitcom.

"Night Li,"

"Night baby brother,"

Charlie curled up in bed that night feeling truly content for the first time since he'd gotten to Sydney. Things seemed to finally be going right – thanks to his daily dose of methadone his withdrawal symptoms were practically nonexistent, his relationship with his brother had never before been this strong and he was really starting to feel like his dreams were pointing him in a positive direction.

His final thought as he drifted off to sleep was of the pregnant girl. After the dreams he'd had earlier on in the day about her he was hoping for more of the same tonight.

Little did he know that once again his dreams were about to take a turn for the worse.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The beginning of his dream was little more than a confused flickering between scenes – walking through the jungle with the pregnant girl, the two of them smiling and laughing together as they set down bedding in the caves, holding a golf club in his hands underneath a wide blue sky. He hit the ball carefully but to his dismay it missed the hole by barely a few inches.

_Dejection and shame washed over him as he trudged wearily back to the caves again only to be greeted cheerfully by the pregnant girl. He snapped at her and she recoiled from him instantly, making him feel guilty._

"_I'm sorry," he apologised. "I lost the golf tournament."_

"_Oh, I'm sorry," she looked sad for him but Charlie still didn't feel soothed like he normally would have done. "Maybe next time you'll win?"_

"_Maybe."_

_The girl smiled half heartedly at him before turning back to her diary._

_Screams filled his ears as he held a pair of pale hands covered in blood. Shocked, Charlie tried to wake himself up again but the dream seemed loathe to let him go. It dragged him in even deeper –colours and images flashing through his mind at a million miles an hour._

_Cups of tea…the girl staring at him like he was a stranger…his own fist slamming angrily against a tree trunk – God you're an idiot Charlie – screams filled his ears before they faded into sobs, then silence as he walked, a blanket in his hands and a nervous twist in his stomach..._

"_If you want to close your eyes I'll be here all night."_

"_These are textbook anxiety nightmares…" the doctor was saying._

"_It's __**not**__ all in her head," Charlie insisted._

_Charlie gaped as the girl moaned and gripped his hand tightly._

"_Okay, we need to time the contractions," he was babbling. "That's what you do – time the contractions, okay? One sugar plum fairy, two sugar plum fairy—"_

"_Charlie!" she gaped at him like he was insane. "GET JACK!"_

_Green, green, green as he ran, panting through the jungle. Tropical heat and dripping sweat and…he was back in the clearing._

_**WHAT THE HELL?!**_

"_It hurts!" the pregnant girl moaned and Charlie reached for her hand again and then she was breathing heavily, almost panting with the pain.__ "I'm not supposed to be here!"_

_**I'm not supposed to be here either**__, Charlie thought desperately, struggling against the unyielding stranglehold of his dream. __**Why the hell can't I wake up?!**_

"_Someone promised me it would be different," she was telling him now, calmer. "His name was Richard Malkin. He was a psychic."_

"_A psychic?"_

_The girl ducked her head. "I know, it's embarrassing."_

"_Maybe he knew? I mean…if you wanted it bad enough, you know, if he had the gift – and I-I believe some people do – then maybe he __**knew**__, Claire."_

_Claire?_

_The scene wavered again and grew dark and Charlie immediately began to fight – this time to stay __**in**__ the dream. He forced himself back into it, feeling like he was pushing his way through half-set jelly. Through the thick darkness surrounding him, he could hear her talking but he just couldn't see her…_

"_He knew about the plane...what was gonna happen..."_

_Claire, she said her name was Claire…but…dammit why can't I see her! Where is she? Is she okay? Is she still having contractions?_

_A world of green, a flash of gold, the warmth of skin underneath his hand…_

"_Birthing emergency averted. I told you I'd take care of you."_

_**Is she okay?**_

_And the picture was complete again._

"_Thanks Charlie," the pregnant girl – Claire he thought with amazement – smiled up at him and then she was guiding his hands to her stomach to let him feel the baby kick. "He just kicked. Here…"_

"_Ethan?"_

_And suddenly there was another person in the dream – a man, lean and tall, staring at them both from across the way. Charlie's breath caught in his throat._

"_Where's Jack?"_

_The girl was screaming again, there was the feel of rain and all was black, black, black._

_Charlie panicked, trying desperately to get free, lashing out, turning in frantic circles on uneven ground…_

_And then there was something around his neck – tighter and tighter it pulled until he could barely breathe. Then with a sudden, terrifying yank, his feet left the ground and he screamed out in pain – a scream that was almost immediately choked off from the pressure around his neck. He panicked, flailing instinctively, kicking his feet in the air as he swung in a violent circle from the noose. His hands were at his throat, tugging ineffectually, trying to give him enough space to breathe…to breathe!_

_There was laughter, high and cold from below and then the world swirled into darkness. Charlie felt himself begin to slip away, and for a moment he was actually glad._

_**Is that what dying is like?**__ He wondered. __**If it is then it's really not so bad after all…**_

_But just as he'd decided that he'd quite like to stay in this comfortable, quiet darkness there was a loud bang, his mouth opened and his lungs welcomed in a flood of cold, painful, wonderful air. He caught a flash of the doctor and the brunette woman hovering above him as he took his first breath…._

And then he woke up – screaming.

Within moments, Liam was barrelling through the doorway to his bedroom, his pyjamas askew and a cricket bat in his hands.

"Charlie? Charlie! What the hell's the matter?"

Charlie couldn't even answer. His entire body was shaking and he realised presently that his sheets were absolutely drenched in his own sweat. He pawed at his throat making ineffectual whimpering noises, trying desperately to convey what he'd seen to his brother. His oesophagus still felt tight, constricted, like he really had been strung up from a tree.

"Charlie?" Liam said, looking truly frightened now. "Are you alright baby brother?"

"N-n-no," Charlie finally managed to stutter. Vaguely he realised that he was crying although he didn't remember starting. Now it seemed that he couldn't stop either.

"Jesus Christ," Liam dropped the cricket bat and was at Charlie's side in an instant, pulling his younger brother into an embrace. Charlie gratefully closed his eyes and leant heavily against his brother, breathing shallowly through his mouth. "What the hell happened Charlie?"

"Dream," Charlie managed to gasp. "I had this…this dream. The pregnant girl – Claire – she was in trouble and I couldn't…and the doctor didn't believe me…and then Ethan hung me up from a tree!"

"Who the hell is Ethan?" Liam pulled back to look Charlie in the eye. "And what do you mean they hung you up? You mean like on a harness?"

"No Li," Charlie tried to snap but found that it hurt his throat too much. "Not like on a harness. He strung me up from the neck – he tried to kill me."

"God," Liam said, still looking somewhat shocked. "Just as well it was a dream eh?"

Charlie stared at him for a moment, not really comprehending the word, and then he laughed.

"A dream," he echoed. "Right."

"Come on," Liam tugged him out of bed. "I'll make you a hot drink."

Down in the kitchen Liam spooned liberal amounts of chocolate powder into a glass as he heated up milk in the microwave. Charlie stood there awkwardly, twitching involuntarily and rubbing distractedly at his neck. Liam seemed to notice his restlessness but he didn't say anything until they were both sitting at the kitchen bench.

"Look, Charlie," he started tentatively. "I know that having these dreams can't be all that fun for you…"

"Too bloody right," Charlie muttered and tried to sip at the hot chocolate. It trickled down his throat, making him cough a little through the residual ache in his neck.

"Well I just want you to know that…I'm here for you," Liam said quietly. "I'm always here for you Charlie. After all, you're still my baby brother," he grinned at him. "Just like back when I used to let you sleep with me when we were kids and you had a nightmare."

Charlie rolled his eyes, embarrassed, but didn't say anything.

"And you can talk to me," Liam continued, almost painfully earnest now. "About this stuff. I know what it's like you know? I went through that methadone bollocks as well and I know how much it sucks."

"I know Li," Charlie rasped out. "I appreciate it – really I do. I know it can't be all that fantastic having a recovering heroin addict as a house guest..."

"You're my _brother_," Liam said defensively. "I don't care what you are – I still love you and you are always welcome in my home. I'll always be around to help you out."

Charlie felt a flash of bitterness and he echoed back to his words from barely a fortnight ago – _you __**never**__ looked out for me!_

Liam hadn't always been a perfect role model for him – and he hadn't always been eager to offer his help on the rare occasions when Charlie did ask for it. But how could he begrudge him that now when he was fully supporting him while he got clean? It was ungrateful and spiteful and Charlie didn't want to be either of those things – least of all to his brother.

"Yeah I know," Charlie sighed and then finally looked up and smiled slightly. "Thanks."

Liam smiled back at him and then rose to his feet.

"I hate to do this to you but I'm going to have to go back to bed for a while mate – I didn't realise that I'm starting work earlier today. But if you need me…"

"I'll come wake you up," Charlie promised then grimaced. "I should probably write down what I can remember in my dream diary anyway – my therapist is going to love analysing it."

"Alright," Liam seemed satisfied with that. "Goodnight Charlie."

"Night Li," Charlie returned and then added, "Love you."

Liam paused, surprised, but then he smiled. "I love you too. Sleep well."

Charlie waited until Liam was upstairs before he made his move to his brother's home office. He settled down at the desk with his hot chocolate and began to scribble down in his journal everything that he remembered about his dream.

_-I said the pregnant girls name when I was talking to her! It's Claire!_

_-V v involved dream this time – and long! Couldn't even wake myself up like I normally can. V weird_

_-Lost a game of golf, came back to caves again (Claire has def. moved to caves)_

_-Claire having nightmares(?) looked after her, seemed to help a little bit (YES!)_

_-Doctor again – didn't believe me when I said that Claire wasn't imagining things (git)_

_-Claire got upset, headed back to the beach. Went to stop her, started having contractions (her, not me)_

_-Claire mentioned some psychic she went and saw (Richard Malkin)_

_-Creepy guy (Ethan?) interrupted moment with me and Claire. Felt the baby kick! Brilliant._

_-Got hung from a tree (really, really, really bloody scary! Neck still hurt when I woke up)_

When he'd written it all down, Charlie put down his pen and stared at the words on the page blankly. He could already figure out exactly what his therapist was going to say – that deep down he was still insecure about not only getting clean but also staying clean and trying to gain people's trust again.

As for the hanging…well even he didn't know what that was about. What he did know was that his dreams – fragmented as they were – were becoming clearer and clearer. He knew what the pregnant girl's name was now – Claire. Going back over his notes again he suddenly remembered one bit that he hadn't written down.

After she'd mentioned the psychic, Claire had said something about him knowing what was going to happen, about the plane…

Charlie reached down and turned the computer on, a sneaking suspicion creeping up on him. Once it had opened up, he logged onto the internet and when the default search browser came up he quickly typed in 'Oceanic Flight 815' and then watched with bated breath as the results came up. To his surprise, there were quite a few matches – the official Oceanic site being the first on the list.

Scanning a little further along in the results he noted a scatter of blog entries, a site about something called the Hanso foundation, several conspiracy websites that were claiming everything from alien abduction to secret government conspiracies, a collection of links to news bulletins and…a memorial site.

Charlie hurriedly clicked on the link, his mouth dry as he waited for the home page to load. It was a low-tech site but even at a glance Charlie could see that the content on it was going to be easy enough to go through. There was very few pages including what appeared to be a copy of the flight manifest (which he reasoned was probably either fake or obtained illegally), a plea for funds to help aid the search for the plane and an online memorial page where people could leave messages about their loved ones.

Charlie tried the flight manifest link first and was relieved to find that somebody had taken what looked like the official flight manifest and added onto it. He went down the list, searching carefully for the girl from his dream. He knew her name now, as well as the fact that she originated from Australia and that she was flying alone. To his great surprise, there were very few Australian's on the flight – and those that were seemed to be either too old to be the girl in his dream or else they were travelling with their family. Finally, just when his head was beginning to hurt, he found her.

Name: Littleton, Claire

Date of Birth: 27/10/1982

Place of Origin: Sydney, Australia

"Yes…" he hissed through his teeth triumphantly and then quickly backtracked, hoping that somebody had left a message for her up on the memorial page. It took him a fair while to sift his way through the backlog but eventually he ran across a handful of tributes, mainly from what appeared to be her old school friends. He read through them quickly, pausing only when he discovered a very short one signed from someone called Rachel.

_Claire – I miss you so much every day, my beautiful, sweet friend. I'll always remember your gorgeous smile and I hope that you and your baby are together now wherever you are. I pray every day that you'll both make it home again safely. Love Rachel_

"You and your baby," Charlie muttered. "She _was_ pregnant."

Clattering to his feet, he left the browser open and all but ran to the cupboard where the phone books were kept and began flipping frantically through the White Pages until he reached the L's. There were twenty-three Littleton's listed in the Sydney area. Charlie made his way over to the phone with the book in hand and he had already started dialling the first number when he realised that it was far too early for anybody to be awake and willing to speak to him.

Feeling a little disappointed, he retired to the kitchen table and worked on transcribing all the names, addresses and phone numbers onto a piece of paper with the first writing implement on hand – which just so happened to be one of Meghan's crayons. Satisfied, he folded it up, tucked it into the pocket of his dressing gown and tip toed back upstairs.

He didn't sleep but rather lay awake, excitement coursing through him. Was he finally going to figure out who this Claire girl was? She had been in his dreams every night for weeks now, and he was really starting to feel like his connection to her was growing. And what of this Ethan character? What had he wanted from her?

"Claire," he whispered out loud to the ceiling, trying out the way her name felt in his mouth. It rolled over his tongue comfortably, as though he'd said her name a thousand times before. "Claire Littleton. Littleton. Claire. Claire. Hello Claire. Claire."

He was still muttering her name to himself when his radio alarm went off at seven-thirty.

TBC


	4. Chapter 3

**Characters:** Charlie, Liam, Karen, Lindsey Littleton, Richard Malkin, Charlotte, mentions of Claire and other Lostees. 

**Author:** Sapphirechild

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took a long time before Charlie could begin his search for Claire's relatives in earnest. She had been suspiciously absent from his dreams lately – and he'd been finding himself moping in his waking hours too because he was so worried about her.

He didn't know what had happened to her after he'd been hung but she hadn't returned to the caves or the beach camp and he felt edgy and upset not knowing if she was safe or not. Each time he fell asleep he hoped desperately that she'd be in his next dream, smiling again like she had the first night that he had met her. It seemed like years ago that he'd offered her his blanket and reassured her that everything was going to be okay.

Liam, oblivious to his brother's private anguish, believed that the downswing in Charlie's moods was due to the fact that he had refused to lend him his car. Charlie had invented a story about going sightseeing and getting to know the neighbourhood to cover up his real intentions – to seek out Claire's relatives. Liam however had flat out refused to lend it to him on the grounds that he was worried that Charlie might still not be in total control of his body yet and he didn't want to be responsible for Charlie hurting himself if he lost control of the car.

Charlie had grudgingly decided to be patient – there was no way that he was going to catch taxis all over Sydney on his brother's dime to try and find Claire's relatives. But it was incredibly frustrating to know that they could be living just down the street from him and he didn't even know.

The days dragged so rather than let himself stew on his worries about Claire, Charlie instead began to devote his time to research. He would barricade himself in Liam's office and pore over the internet for hours, trying to find new information on the passengers of 815. He also found Richard Malkin's ad in the Yellow Pages and cross referenced the mobile number on it with the list of Malkin's in the White Pages. When he found one that matched he added the address to the bottom of the list of places that he had to visit.

On top of this, he somehow found the time to continue with his methadone treatment and his psych appointments, looked after Meghan when he was requested to, cooked meals and helped Karen out as much as he could…but he still felt restless. His dreams reflected this too. He spent hours gathering firewood, spearing fish and picking fruit but the one thing he really wanted to do – find Claire – was being denied from him.

Nearly two weeks since he'd woken up from his dream of being hung, Charlie decided to go back and re-read his dream diary, hoping to glean some new insight about what exactly was happening on the island. He settled down in the living room while Liam and Karen watched the news. Meghan was curled up next to him on the sofa sucking her thumb blissfully as he flipped open the little journal he'd bought.

To his intense surprise however, it was filled with lines and lines of unfamiliar handwriting, little squiggles and doodles drawn in the margins. He scanned quickly over a page that contained a whole list of odds and ends and then flipped forward, pausing when he saw his own name scrawled up near the top of the page.

_"…realized I really like Charlie. There's something about him that's just so adorable and sweet. Even in a scary place like this Charlie makes me feel safe."  
_  
"Liam?" he called excitedly, his eyes fixed on the page. "Have a read of this!"

Liam leant over obligingly and took the diary from him.

"Can you see it?" Charlie asked eagerly.

"See what?" Liam said, confused. "It's just your dream diary Charlie."

"Wait-what?" Charlie snatched it back and riffled through the pages frantically but they were all filled up with his own untidy scrawl. "No…it was…there was…"

"What exactly did you think you saw in there?" Liam frowned.

"I thought there was something written in here by somebody else…" Charlie muttered, still flipping pages frantically. "I must've…been imagining things or…"

Liam shrugged but he still looked confused as he turned his attention back to the television again.

That night, Claire appeared in Charlie's dreams again – scared out of her wits, apparently unable to recognise anyone, but alive. Despite the basic feeling of negativity behind his dream, Charlie woke up feeling truly hopeful for the first time in days – or at least very determined. He clattered downstairs jubilantly and dropped a quick kiss on Meghan's head before plopping down into the chair across from Liam and leaning forward.

"Liam," he said seriously. "I want to borrow a car today."

Liam looked up at him warily and Charlie continued on before his brother could say no.

"Look," he said imploringly. "I know you were worried before about me having an attack of the shakes or something and wrapping myself around a power pole but I've been feeling really good withdrawal wise the past couple of days. And you know, I think the main reason I've been getting so bloody depressed is that I'm not going anywhere at the moment. I mean, the only people I'm interacting with are you guys and my shrink and all the other messed up buggers in the rehab clinic."

Liam didn't say anything and so Charlie pressed on.

"I think I need to get back out into the world again – go take a walk down the beach or go check out the local shops or something. See some new faces you know? I'd like to go into the city and do some sightseeing too – go check out the bridge and the Opera house and all that other touristy bollocks we never got to do when we came on tour.

"So," he finished hopefully. "What d'you say?"

Liam frowned, considering and Karen took the opportunity to chime in with her two cents.

"Oh go on Liam, he can take my car for today. I was going to catch up with Laura anyway – I'm sure she'll be able to pick Meghan and me up and bring us back home again. Some fresh air will do him good. And," She smiled at Charlie who grinned back at her, surprised but pleased that she was backing him up. "We can give him your mobile phone too. That way if he gets lost or we need to get a hold of him we can."

"What if I miss a call?" Liam protested.

"Charlie is perfectly capable of ringing your work mobile and passing a message onto you Liam," Karen said sternly. "Go on. He'll be fine. It'll get him out from under my feet too."

"Exactly," Charlie agreed readily. "I'm surprised she hasn't gotten sick of me yet to be honest. Do you really want to be responsible for your wife having a mental breakdown from too much exposure to me?"

Liam's face split into a grin. "All right," he conceded. "You can go for a spin today and then we'll see how you go."

Charlie beamed and cuffed his brother affectionately on the side of the head. "Thanks Li," he said, grinning widely before turning to his sister-in-law. "And thank you Karen."

Karen smiled back at him. "Just mind you don't scratch the paintwork Charlie," she teased. "Or I'll have to get Liam to pay to get it redone and you know how much he'd love that..."

"Sod off!" Liam laughed. "If he scratches your car he can bloody pay for it himself!"

Charlie shrugged. "Just put it on my tab. I'm probably indebted to you both for life as it is."

"Oh I wouldn't say _life _just yet," Liam grinned. "But definitely until you're at least seventy."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karen's car was almost brand new and it drove like an absolute dream on almost no petrol – which was just as well really because it was heading into late afternoon and Charlie had yet to find any one of Claire's relatives on his long list of Littleton's.

So far during his travels he had discovered some very interesting characters; including a Kevin Littleton who was about as large as a small killer whale and reeked of cheese, a June Littleton who was well on sixty and living with a woman half her age, and an entire family (or perhaps horde was a better word) of Littleton's whose children all seemed to be wearing the same matching outfit.

Unfortunately, not one of these or any of the others he had visited had ever heard of a Claire Littleton before and Charlie was beginning to get a bit fed up with what he had originally thought of as a clever plan. This had all seemed so much easier in the planning stages than it did now.

L. Littleton was the fifteenth person on his list. She lived alone and Charlie was quite worried that she'd just end up being some dear old lady who would probably be terrified by his scruffy self appearing on her front doorstep. When she opened her front door to him however, he had to catch himself from blurting out something stupid.

Her eyes were just like Claire's – the same shape, the same unusual transparent shade of blue. And he could see other similarities too, the eyebrows, the face shape…Charlie's heart thundered in his chest. Had he actually found her mother? She looked just about the right age…

"If you're selling something…" she began warningly, one hand poised to slam the door shut in his face.

"No, no I'm selling anything," Charlie said desperately. "I'm here because I'm looking for some…information." The woman paused to show that she was listening and Charlie continued carefully. He'd had more than one door slammed in his face already today. "I'm trying to find the next of kin for a girl called Claire Littleton – does that name mean anything to you?"

The woman froze and her face seemed to crumple momentarily before she smoothed it back out again and cleared her throat.

"Who wants to know?"

"Are you…her mum?" Charlie asked tentatively.

"I was her Aunt," the woman said flatly. "My name's Lindsey. Who the hell are you?"

"Charlie Pace," he said, trying hard to suppress his joy at having finally found someone who had known her. "I was wondering…can I talk to you about your niece for a moment?"

"Well that depends on what it's about," Lindsey said shortly. "You said your name was what – Charlie?"

"Yes."

"Not Thomas?"

"Absolutely not," Charlie assured her.

Lindsey pursed her lips for a moment and then sighed and stepped aside to let him into the house.

"I should warn you," she told him as she shut the front door. "I know how to defend myself. So if you're here to try and rob me..."

"I'm not here to rob you," Charlie refrained from rolling his eyes only with great difficulty. "Just to ask a few questions."

"Questions huh?" she led him into the lounge room and gestured him into a stiff looking armchair whilst she stood and crossed her arms at him. "What sort of questions? You're not from Oceanic are you? Because I already told you people…"

"I'm not from Oceanic," Charlie interrupted smoothly. "I wanted to ask you some questions about Claire."

"And how did you know Claire?" she asked sharply.

"I _do_know Claire," Charlie corrected her without thinking.

"She's dead," Lindsey snapped. "She died in that plane crash and don't you try to tell me otherwise."

"I don't think she _is_dead," Charlie said, leaning forward earnestly. "Listen, Lindsey…"

"No, you listen to _me_," Lindsey snatched a photograph off a side table and thrust it into Charlie's hands. "My niece got herself knocked up, she got herself on a plane – Lord knows why – and it crashed and now she and that baby are both dead. End of story."

Charlie stared blankly at the photograph in his hands. A sullen looking teenage girl with black hair stood between two smiling blonde women – Lindsey and a woman who Charlie could only assume was Claire's mother.

"That's the last photo that got taken before she crashed her mother's car and turned my sister Carole into a vegetable," Lindsey said crushingly and Charlie froze and looked up, horrified. "Claire was an awful kid, a ratty teenager – and she didn't get much better after that either. I didn't see much of her after she moved out of here and I'm glad."

"So did you have any contact with her at all before she got on that plane?" Charlie asked desperately.

Lindsey's lip curled. "She rang me up about four months ago, grovelling for a place to sleep. I told her to look elsewhere if she was looking for charity." She shook her head. "You let them put one toe in the door…"

"You know, considering she's your niece you don't seem all that bothered about not helping her out when she needed you," Charlie said, his voice rising angrily. "What if she didn't have anywhere else to go?"

"I-I well," Lindsey spluttered. "It would have just been a waste of my time trying to help her anyway. And I wasn't about to get lumped with raising some bastard kid of hers while she lazed about and earned a pittance!"

"You're wrong," Charlie said defensively. "She's going to make an excellent mother. I can tell."

Lindsey merely stared at him. "What are you talking about? She _died_. She's _dead_."

"Well…I don't think that she _is_dead actually." Charlie said slowly. When Lindsey continued to stare at him he sighed and finally resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to tell her. "Look, you'll probably think I'm crazy but…I was supposed to get on the same plane as your niece was – only I didn't. And ever since then I've been having these dreams about this island…"

Lindsey gaped at him, outraged. "Get out," she said. "Get out of my house."

"No, wait!" Charlie said pleadingly as she shooed him out into the hallway. "Please – if you could just hear me out…"

"I've heard enough," Lindsey snarled, pushing him bodily out onto the porch. "You come here – into my _home_, insinuate that I'm nothing more than a heartless bitch and then you tell me that my niece isn't dead at all and that you've been having some sort of…of psychic visions of her?"

"Um…" Charlie shuffled his feet nervously. "Well actually I'm pretty sure what's happening is that there are actually two versions of me existing in parallel timelines and…"

Lindsey slammed the door in his face and Charlie sighed heavily.

"…I'm living out two separate lives at the same time."

He stood there and stared helplessly at Lindsey's door for a moment longer before heading back to the car. He didn't think that he was going to get any more help from her. He'd learnt enough as it was.

It wasn't until he went to open the driver's side door that he realised that in Lindsey's haste to extricate him from her home, he had accidentally stolen her picture of Claire. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should leave it on the front porch but then he shook his head and climbed into the car, putting the frame carefully on the passenger side seat. Lindsey wouldn't miss it – he was certain of that.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_A handmade shovel pushed deep into the sand beside a body wrapped in a plastic tarpaulin. No emotion Charlie, no emotion. Blank from anger, blank from rage – don't think, don't feel and you'll be okay – blank, blank, blank… _

The curly haired man was beside him, impossibly large in the early dawn light. "Are you all right?"

_No I'm not all right._

"You're not alone," Charlie recognised the Arab man from the first night on the beach – the one who had wondered why nobody had come for them yet. "Don't pretend to be."

"You wanna go for that walk now?"

Claire smiled up at him and nodded.

"Sure."

Crossing a narrow rope bridge. Pelting through the jungle. A campfire at night.

"It's not going to want me!" Claire bawled through the darkness but Charlie couldn't see her – could only hear her. "It knows I don't want it, that I was gonna give it away…"

But then the shrill cry of a newborn baby broke through the thick night air and Claire's voice joyously began to cry out, repeating the same thing over and over again...

"I have a son!"

Charlie opened his eyes and reached automatically for his dream journal, Claire's voice still echoing in his ears.

_Claire had her baby – it's a boy just like she thought._

He paused for a moment and then added;

_When she was in labour(?) she said that the baby wouldn't want her because she was going to give it up. I need to find out why she saw Richard Malkin and what he said to her. I'm pretty sure he was one of the last people to see her alive. Maybe he can tell me why she got on the plane?_

_--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Richard Malkin lived in a large, snobby double story house in a suburb full of large, snobby double story houses with shiny new cars in the driveways. Charlie, having grown up in a blue collar family, felt rather out of his league in his jeans and t-shirt combination. He hadn't even combed his hair today but even though it was probably sticking up every which way he was far too focused on the task at hand to worry about it for too long.

Liam and Karen had conveniently decided to take Meghan to the zoo today and Charlie had easily been able to decline the offer to come with them, saying that he didn't really fancy watching polar bears scratch their bums all day and that he was sure that they'd enjoy some quality family time without him.

"I might just drive down to Bondi or something," he had lied with a shrug. "Maybe I'll rent out a surfboard – see if I can drown myself in the ocean."

And so he had borrowed Karen's car and driven over to the Malkin residence, full of a confusing mixture of hope and trepidation.

The last time he'd met someone who could see into the future, she had given him the knowledge that had caused some sort of time rift or something that seemed to have literally split him in half. He wondered if Richard Malkin would be able to sense this divide in him too – after all, the connection between himself and the version of him on the island only seemed to be getting stronger and stronger.

He knew this because as fragmented and confusing as his dreams usually were, Charlie had found himself slipping into daydreams about the island in his waking hours as well. Just this morning for example, he had absently called Meghan a _turnip_ of all things. Liam and Karen had been completely confused by the nickname and Charlie had been too afraid to tell them that for a split second as he held her in his arms he had actually believed that he was holding Claire's baby boy and not Meghan at all.

When he knocked nervously on the front door a woman answered almost instantly, but instead of saying hello or introducing herself, she merely stared at him. She was middle aged, with straggly brown hair and pale, wide eyes.

"Um…hi?" Charlie said awkwardly as she continued to stare at him blankly. "I'm looking for Richard Malkin?"

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Not exactly," Charlie said tentatively. "I'm trying to find someone and I think that he'll be able to help me."

The woman said nothing for a moment but then she stepped aside and let him into the spacious foyer. "I'll go get him for you," she said, shutting the door carefully before disappearing down the hallway. Charlie hovered awkwardly amongst all the gleaming splendour – the Malkin's were obviously very well off. As he examined a particularly intricate painting he heard a quiet shuffling noise and he turned to see a teenage girl standing at the top of the stairs, ogling him quite unabashedly.

She had wide, pale eyes reminiscent of the woman who had opened the door so Charlie assumed that this must be her daughter. He nodded at her politely and tried to smile but she didn't stop staring and Charlie began to shift uneasily beneath her silent scrutiny. There was something rather unsettling about the blankness in her gaze…

"I'm Richard Malkin – how can I help you?"

Charlie jumped in surprise and turned to see a middle aged man with blue eyes standing before him.

"I'm Charlie Pace," he said, reaching out to shake Malkin's hand. "I'm looking for someone and I was hoping you might be able to help me."

"Well shall we head upstairs to my study then?" Malkin suggested, gesturing for Charlie to follow him up the stairs. Charlie followed slowly, expecting the girl to still be there, waiting for him so she could stare some more. But when they reached the top of the stairs, she was nowhere to be seen.

Malkin led Charlie into a spacious room decorated with dark wooden furniture and various useless knick knacks. At the back of the room was a desk which Malkin sat down in. Charlie sat on the other side feeling slightly apprehensive.

"I don't usually do readings without a prior booking," he told Charlie. "But it's very rare that I am surprised by a visitor. Have you got the correct fee?"

Charlie swallowed awkwardly. "I wasn't aware that…I mean, I don't want a reading or anything, I just wanted some help to find my friend because I'm pretty sure that you're…"

"It's two hundred for a standard reading," Malkin interrupted him smoothly. "I accept cash only."

Malkin waited expectantly and Charlie reached into his pocket for his wallet. Inside he knew was a single, crumpled fifty dollar note and a handful of loose change. Not nearly enough. He brought it out anyway, saying, "This is all I've got. I can get you the rest but I just…I didn't think I'd get in to see you today otherwise I'd've gone to the…bank."

Malkin pursed his lips but he took the fifty anyway.

"Normally I wouldn't allow someone to do an IOU," he said. "But you've got a desperate air about you Mr. Pace. So I'll do your reading and I'll help you in any way I can and we can sort out the rest of the payment afterwards."

"Thank you," Charlie let out a relieved sigh.

"So who exactly are you looking for?" Malkin asked, leaning forward in his chair. "Friend? Family? Lover?"

"A friend," Charlie stipulated and Malkin nodded.

"Good, good. Have they…" he paused delicately before finishing his sentence, "…passed on? Or are they still with us?"

"Everyone thinks that she's passed on," Charlie admitted. "But I know that she hasn't."

"Interesting," Malkin said quizzically and then abruptly held out his hands. "I'll need your hands Mr. Pace."

Charlie hesitantly rested his hands, palms up on Malkin's. The psychic shut his eyes and seemed to concentrate. Charlie sat there nervously, waiting for him to say something when suddenly he gave a small gasp and Charlie jumped despite himself. The stillness of the room and Malkin's mannerisms were unnerving him.

"Was she young?" he asked softly.

"Yes," Charlie said slowly. "She's in her early twenties."

"Hmmn…" Malkin tilted his head from side to side several times. "Was there…an accident that led to her disappearance? I'm feeling like something happened – something terrible that parted you from each other. Something beyond your control…"

"There was an accident yes," Charlie conceded, his skin goose bumping at Malkin's words. "I wasn't really a part of it though."

"Just her?"

"That's right. A plane crash."

"Recent?" Malkin asked, his nostrils flaring excitedly.

"Yes it was recent," Charlie said, his mouth dry as he watched Malkin continue to tilt his head from side to side, breathing carefully through his nose. "It was all over the papers not long ago. Maybe you read about Oceanic Flight 815 too?"

Malkin's eyes snapped open and he stared at Charlie like he'd just slapped him.

"I'm sorry," he said, a dull flush creeping up his neck. "What flight number did you just say?"

"Oceanic," Charlie repeated, confused as to Malkin's sudden change in demeanour. "815."

Malkin drew his hands back as though scalded.

"I'm sorry," he stammered, pushing the fifty back across the table at Charlie. "I can't uh…I can't continue with this reading…"

"What?" Charlie frowned, confused. "Why not?"

"You're going to have to leave," Malkin babbled. "Now please."

Charlie stared at him in shock and then a raw bubble of anger swelled up inside of him and his face creased into a furious scowl.

"Did you know Claire Littleton Mr. Malkin?"

"Who?" Malkin squawked. "Never heard of her. Is that the girl you're looking for? Funny that, I thought I could hear a 'C' name when I was…"

Charlie exploded.

He swept the desk clear of its various crystals and other various means of divination and an ornate lamp fell to the floor and shattered.

"You knew her!" he said accusingly, pointing a finger dead into Malkin's chest. The man cringed back away from Charlie as he rounded the desk and cornered him against a book case. "You were one of the last people to see Claire Littleton alive! Weren't you Mr. Malkin?"

"I never…absolutely ridiculous…don't know what you're…"

Charlie ripped Claire's photograph out of his pocket and slammed it down on the desk before turning back to the psychic.

"Let's see if I can jog your memory," Charlie said dangerously, getting right up close to Malkin who moved his terrified gaze from the photograph to Charlie's livid face. "She was only young – barely a woman. Very pretty – long blonde hair, blue eyes, about eight months pregnant…are you starting to remember yet?"

Malkin whimpered and shut his eyes as he trembled.

"Her boyfriend left her to raise the baby alone," Charlie continued ruthlessly. "She was going to give the baby up for adoption – until you came into the picture. All of a sudden she's getting on a plane to Los Angeles and she's never seen again."

"Sweet Christ…" Malkin's eyes rolled back and a trickle of sweat ran down his face. "Who _are_you? How do you know all of this?"

"Because I've seen Claire Littleton," Charlie said, his voice quietly dangerous. "I've seen what you've done to her. She's stranded on an island trying to raise that baby all alone now. She's scared. She's _terrified_. And it's because of _you_. You're the one who sent her on that plane and now her life is in danger because of you!"

"Stop!" Malkin cried out, cringing back against the book case. "Stop it!"

Charlie stepped back, repulsed by the cowardly rat before him.

"Why did you do it?" he asked, his voice twisting with emotion. "How could you send her to that bloody place if you _knew_?"

Malkin was panting heavily, sweat pouring off him. "It was…it was what had to happen…she had to raise the baby herself…"

Charlie waited for more but it took several seconds of panting for Malkin to regain his breath again enough to speak.

"She's the first person I actually got a reading off of," he gasped out. "I'm not really a psychic you see – I'm just a fraud. I gather intelligence about people and I exploit it. But Claire – she was different. I actually saw her future..."

"You're lying," Charlie said flatly. "If you're a fraud how could you possibly have a real psychic vision just out of the blue?

"I saw it! I saw the plane crash…"

"You saw her plane crashing so you told her to go and buy a plane ticket to Los Angeles?" Charlie said incredulously.

"No!" Malkin protested. "I told you! I saw danger surrounding her unborn child! She was going to give it up and I couldn't let that happen – she has to raise that baby herself or terrible things..."

"How did she pay for the plane ticket at all?" Charlie demanded. "She was working in a fish and chips shop on minimum wage – she never could have afforded a plane ticket!"

"_I_bought her the ticket!" Malkin wailed, half hysterical now. "I told her there was a couple in Los Angeles waiting for her. I told her that the baby would be safe with them."

"And she believed you?"

"Yes."

"And _was_ there a couple waiting for her in Los Angeles?"

Malkin regarded Charlie with glassy eyes. His mouth was agape but no trace of a word came from between his lips.

"You're disgusting," Charlie spat at him finally, snatching up Claire's photograph and his fifty dollars and shoving them in his jeans pocket. "I hope you rot in hell for what you did to her you pathetic wanker!"

And with that he stormed out of the room, pausing only to push another ornate side table over just for good measure. He slammed his way out of the house, leaving the front door swinging open behind him as he strode up to Karen's car. He got in and sat there for a moment with his head resting against the wheel, just breathing, trying to calm himself down before he started driving. The last thing he needed was to take off at warp speed and wrap the car around a lamp pole.

Just when he was thinking that he might be okay to drive, there was a sudden tap on the window and he nearly leapt out of his skin at the sight of the googly eyed girl from the top of the stairs staring avidly at him through the window.

"Jesusbloodychristbollocks!"

She didn't laugh at the way he was flailing about, merely stared some more, and so Charlie tentatively rolled down the window just enough to speak to her.

"What do you want?" he asked warily. "And why do you keep staring at me like I've got an extra head?"

"I have something to tell you," she said softly. She lisped slightly when she spoke and Charlie had to lean forward in order to catch all of her words properly. "You have to save the baby."

Charlie felt his skin erupt in goosebumps.

"What?" he whispered.

"I told you! You have to save the baby!" she said, suddenly vehement. Her eyes flashes menacingly and Charlie went to wind his window up again but she put her hand in the way. "Wait! Please! I didn't mean to get angry…"

Charlie paused, frozen, listening.

"You not supposed to be here is all," she said quietly. "You're meant to be on the island. You're not supposed to be here."

"But I am on the island," Charlie told her, feeling utterly insane. "And I'm also here. I can't really explain it but..."

The girl shook her head. "You're supposed to be on the island Charlie. You're supposed to save the baby – to save Aaron. He needs you."

Charlie's stomach clenched. "How do you know…?"

"I know things," she whispered, her eyes wider and crazier looking than ever. "I heard things – saw things when..."

"When what?" Charlie demanded. "Where were you? What things did you hear?"

"When I was in between places," the girl whispered back. "You hear them and you see them too don't you? You're always between places now. It's because you're supposed to be there and not here."

"How did you get between places?" Charlie asked.

The girl smiled then – she might've looked beautiful if not for the manic gleam in her eyes.

"I drowned."

Charlie gave an uncontrollable shudder then and a sick feeling washed over and through him – so strong that he thought he might actually vomit.

"Drowned?" he whispered.

"Charlotte!"

The two of them glanced over at the house. Mrs. Malkin was standing at the doorway looking abjectly terrified. Just behind her, Charlie could see Richard Malkin hovering in the shadows.

"I'd better go," Charlotte said, her eyes on her parents. Suddenly she turned back to Charlie, reached through the window and gripped his hand tightly for a long moment. "Just remember – you have to save Aaron."

And with that she was gone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"_She took my baby!"_

_A gun weighed heavily in the waistband of his jeans and a plume of black smoke rose high above the treetops – far and away._

"_Get him back Charlie!" Claire was sobbing. "Get Aaron back!"_

"_Aaron?" confusion was quickly replaced by determination as he became aware of Claire's hands, gripping his shirt tightly as she cried. __"Claire, I will __**get him back**__. Promise."_

_Green and green and green flashing past – he always seemed to be running through the jungle in his dreams, or rather in his memories. But today he wasn't running from something. No. Today Charlie was the predator, the pursuer. A dark shadow wove ahead of him bobbing in and out of sight – the Arab man. He wasn't his prey though – no, he was the guide._

_Falling rocks, a moment of blackness, hot sticky blood against skin and a piece of towel pressed to the raging pain of his head wound._

"_I'm not going back without that baby, Sayid!"_

_I have to save him!_

_The jungle was dark but the beach was lit up from a lonely bonfire. Sayid deposited Aaron in his arms and Charlie held him tightly._

"_I heard them say they were coming for the child," the Frenchwoman was whispering tearfully. "The Others said they were coming for the boy!"_

"_You're pathetic!" Charlie snapped at her._

"_Aaron!" Claire took her son from him, hugging him joyfully. Charlie watched her, beaming as she looked up, hesitated, and then threw her arms around him. "Thank you!" she said, her voice choked with emotion. "Thank you for getting him back Charlie…"_

Charlie woke with his heart blazing proudly in his chest and – as was his habit now – he reached for his dream journal and jotted down a single sentence.

_I have to look after Aaron – I have to keep him safe._

Slamming his book shut he rolled back onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to memorise the feel of Claire's arms around his shoulders as she held him.

TBC...


	5. Chapter 4

Characters: Charlie, Liam, Karen and Meghan with mentions of various Lostees.

Author: Sapphirechild

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because Liam worked during the day and Charlie didn't particularly have a job due to his current circumstances (being clean for little over a month was hardly an encouraging thing to have on your resume), he had been spending an increasing amount of time with Karen and Meghan – whenever he wasn't chasing psychics around town of course.

Karen often enlisted his help to keep Meghan entertained whilst she did chores around the house, or the three of them would spend hours baking up endless batches of cookies and slices. His sister-in-law was grateful for both his company and for the extra set of eyes watching her daughter. It also meant that she had more time to herself and, after Liam let Charlie start driving again, it was soon decided that Charlie would have one day a week where he took Meghan completely off Karen's hands.

At first Charlie hadn't felt all that comfortable with the idea of looking after Meghan by himself because really – what did he know about kids? But before too long he found – to his great surprise – that he was truly enjoying spending time looking after his niece. He spent hours playing down at the local park with her or watching her favourite cartoons. She was a bright child, bubbly and friendly and Charlie loved watching her learn and play. He'd even found himself singing nursery rhymes to her, chasing her around the garden and playing hide and seek or tickling her mercilessly until she erupted into screams of giddy laughter.

"You're a marvel Charlie," Karen would say wonderingly, shaking her head in amazement as she watched the two of them together. "Are you absolutely sure you don't have any kids stashed away somewhere? I can't believe how comfortable you are with her."

Charlie merely shrugged. He knew the reason that he was getting on so well with Meghan but he didn't dare voice it aloud to his sister-in-law. As far as Karen, Liam and his doctor knew, Charlie had all but stopped having his strange dreams now. They were all very pleased with his progress and Liam had told him that he was so proud of his baby brother that he might just have to get him a present one of these days to say congratulations.

Charlie meanwhile was worried. He was being haunted by a recurring motif that seemed to be in his dreams nowadays – a pile of statues of the Virgin Mary hidden in the jungle that he kept on adding to. This in itself wasn't such a bad thing – it was what he knew was inside that was the problem.

Heroin. Bags and bags of the stuff. He wasn't entirely sure where his island self had gotten his stash from but he lived in constant terror that Claire would one day find out his secret. In order to distract her, he began to take care of Aaron more and more, determined that she see how much he cared for her son, that he was responsible.

And without even meaning to, like a mirror image of himself, Charlie began to do the same with Meghan.

He had slipped up too many times now calling her Turnip to the point where both Karen and Liam were starting to accept the nickname although neither of them seemed to like it all that much. Charlie had also swooped in unthinkingly when Meghan had tripped over and grazed her knee – before either Liam or Karen could even blink he had taken her inside, cleaned the graze carefully and then made it all better with what he claimed was an 'extra special bandaid' in fluorescent pink.

Later on Liam had cracked a joke about Charlie becoming a doctor and Karen had laughed too but there had been something a little strained about their smiles that Charlie didn't pick up on until much later on.

The next day Charlie dropped Meghan off at day-care without telling Karen first that he was taking her. She had been terrified, ringing Liam in an absolute panic when she couldn't find her daughter and then she had all but strangled Charlie when he strolled into the house and announced nonchalantly that he'd just dropped Meghan off and why wasn't Karen at her yoga class?

The final straw came when Liam had called Karen downstairs to go over some financial issues quickly with him and Charlie had found Meghan sitting up in bed, waiting expectantly for her usual bedtime story. Without even thinking, he chose a book and began to read it for her, Meghan pop-eyed with excitement at this change in her routine.

When Karen found him she was incredibly upset but she tried her best to hide it, saying that she wanted to speak to him downstairs as soon as he was done.

"I know that it might not seem like a big deal to you," she had told him icily. "But reading the bedtime story is my special thing that I do with Meghan – same as when Liam comes and tucks her in and turns out the light. I'm not saying don't help out with her because I'm very grateful for your help and I'm glad that you're having fun with her but…Charlie?"

He frowned up at his sister-in-law in honest confusion. As far as he was aware he hadn't done anything wrong and now he was being run through the wringer!

"She's not your daughter," Karen said finally. "Remember that won't you?"

He had nodded humbly then and agreed to back off.

Unfortunately, his other life had no intention of backing off on his protection of Aaron and that same night his dreams turned once again to nightmares. Claire smashed open the statue and confronted him about the drugs. Charlie watched in horror as he lied openly to her and then she kicked him out, calling him a liar.

A quick count revealed that his stash of statues had grown now to a terrifying amount. The next thing he knew he was trying to save Aaron from a piano that was being swept out to sea only to wake within his dream to the reality of Claire apparently flirting with Locke!

Full of jealousy and self loathing, Charlie deliberately woke himself up after an unpleasant conversation with Claire and was surprised to find that it was only one in the morning. Unwilling to have more dreams of the same ilk but too exhausted to try and stay awake, Charlie rolled over and shut his eyes again, hoping against all hope that he could patch things up with Claire and go back to the way things had been before he'd found the stupid statues...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_The cradle was being swept out to sea, being carried out on huge waves that would surely drown the infant within it. Charlie cried out desperately for help, tugging his shirt and shoes off before plunging in. _

_I have to save the baby!_

Breathe and stroke and breathe and stroke…

"Aaron!"

The cradle was surprisingly light as he dragged it back to shore and took the child out to hold him against his bare chest comfortingly. Charlie was still standing ankle deep in the water when he noticed the two figures on the shore – both blonde and beautiful, dressed in long, sky blue robes trimmed in gold.

"He's in danger," his mother insisted in her soft voice. "You have to save him. The baby's in danger. You have to save him. The baby's in terrible danger..."

"You have to save the baby," Claire agreed. "Charlie, only you can save him. The baby. You have to save the baby, Charlie..."

Aaron bawled unhappily in his arms and Charlie tried desperately to shush him.

"Charlie?" Liam pushed his way out of the jungle, dressed in long flowing robes that looked utterly ridiculous on his lanky frame. "What're you doing baby brother?"

"What?" Charlie asked confused.

"It's the middle of the night – and what are you doing with Meghan?"

Charlie blinked and looked down to see not Aaron but his niece, cradled gently against his bare chest. She was still half asleep, her thumb positioned firmly in her mouth. Behind him he could hear the sound of rapidly running water. To his immense shock, he realised that he had turned on every single tap in the bathroom and that the sink and bathtub were both close to overflowing.

"I don't know," Charlie said blankly. Liam merely stared at him, just as non-plussed and then he seemed to snap out of his reverie and he reached his arms out.

"Give her to me," Liam ordered.

Charlie carefully handed Meghan to him and Liam held her tight. "I'll take her back to bed – you turn off all the taps and then I'll come back yeah?"

Charlie set about his task diligently but his hands were shaking as he turned all the taps off and then watched the roiling waters gurgle on down the drains. What the hell had he been doing? Sleep walking? He'd never done _that_before…

"Charlie," Liam was at the doorway, beckoning him. "Let's go downstairs."

Charlie followed mutely, still trembling slightly and distinctly light-headed. When they were in the kitchen, Liam finally turned to him, his face unreadable.

"What the hell happened?" he said, his voice trembling with barely suppressed emotion – Charlie couldn't tell if he was angry, scared or just plain freaked out. "I've known you your entire life Charlie and never once, _ever_, have I seen you sleepwalk or do anything even _remotely_like that!" 

Charlie was silent, biting his lip to stop himself from blurting out whatever crazy thing might happen to spring up in his brain first. Liam paused to compose himself and then he pushed his glasses up his nose, sighed, and then ran a hand through his rumpled hair.

"What on _earth_ were you dreaming about Charlie?"

"Well…" Charlie cleared his throat nervously. "I was dreaming about Aaron – his cradle got swept out to sea and I…I saved him…" he faltered for a moment, still unable to read his brothers expression and getting more and more worried by this. "And then mum was there – she and Claire were both there, dressed as angels and…and they told me that I had to save the baby and then you came out of the jungle wearing these robe things and then I…well I woke up."

"I thought these crazy dreams of yours had stopped?" Liam stared at him for a long moment and Charlie fidgeted nervously underneath his brother's unfathomable scrutiny. Liam opened his mouth carefully, took a moment longer, and then spoke again. "I heard the sound of water running," he told Charlie. "When I came to see what was going on you were standing with Meghan in your arms like you were about to drop her in the bath."

His voice wasn't exactly accusing but Charlie still flinched, unable to think of anything he could say that could possibly excuse what he had been about to do – whether he had been aware of it at the time or not. He said nothing to his brother and after a moment Liam sighed.

"Look Charlie," he said. "I have no problem with helping you out. I have no problems with supporting you while you go through your rehab– I remember what it was like and I know how important it is to know that there's someone there for you. But I won't let you endanger my family – and I especially won't let you hurt Meghan."

"I didn't…" Charlie began faintly, so shocked by his brother's words that he felt like he'd been clobbered across the head by a two by four. "I would never…"

Liam's face tightened into a grimace. "I've put her in with Karen and I for tonight just in case – but Charlie, tomorrow I'm going to go with you and we're going to talk to your doctor about prescribing some medication to help you sleep better."

"But…"

"No Charlie," Liam said harshly. "I have to draw the line somewhere. I can cope with you having random food cravings and eating us out of house and home, I can cope with you disappearing for hours at a time with my wife's car and coming back with no petrol but I will inot/i let you put my daughter's life in danger."

"Liam…"

"And I don't care if it was an accident," Liam continued, his eyes blazing. "I don't care if you were sleepwalking or possessed or…I mean for God's sake, you could have drowned her in the bloody bathtub and not even realised what you were doing!" Charlie dropped his eyes, ashamed. "So I don't want you to come anywhere near Meghan anymore."

Charlie's head snapped up and he gaped at his brother. "Liam!" he protested.

His brother stared back – his blue eyes steely.

"You will _not_ go near my daughter again unless Karen or I tell you that you can," he told him, then conceded. "At least not until we can both be one hundred percent certain that you can be trusted with her."

"Trusted with her?" Charlie felt like crying. "She's my niece! I love her! I'd never hurt her!"

"She's my _daughter_!" Liam all but roared and Charlie shrank back from his brother. Liam stopped himself then and took a steadying breath before continuing on in a much more level voice. "And you're my brother. And I don't want to ever have to choose between the two of you…"

"Why not?" Charlie snapped, his voice dripping with bitterness. "You already chose her once before over me! Why not just kick me out and have done with it like I know you want to? Then you'll be able to keep your precious darling daughter and your perfect darling wife safe from your stupid, deranged druggie brother won't you?"

Liam froze and a second later Charlie realised exactly what he had just said and he caught his breath and held it in his lungs. He had never before voiced the hurt, the betrayal he had felt when Liam had chosen Karen and Meghan over him. For months he had stewed and fumed and cried over it – his only remaining family abandoning him for another. The silence stretched between them, taut and straining like a fraying rope and Charlie waited with bated breath…

"Please Charlie," Liam said quietly. "Please don't make me have to choose between you again. I never wanted to…" he lost his voice for a moment then, shook his head and then tried again. "I want you to know that I'm truly sorry for what I did to you. I sold your piano – the one that mum gave you so that I could have a chance to fix up my messed up life and then I just left you in the dust. I wasn't there for you and I'm sorry."

Charlie was silent.

"But I want to make up for it," Liam said, bleakly earnest. "I want to help you beat this Charlie – but I can't help you if you won't even help yourself."

Charlie sighed impatiently. "Okay fine. Whatever. I'll do whatever I need to."

Liam touched a hand to his shoulder. "Thank you. I'll see you in the morning then, ready to go see the doctor." He headed for the door, turned back and offered him one last grim smile. "I hope you have better dreams baby brother."

Charlie tried to smile back at him, but despite Liam's words, he crawled out of bed early the next morning almost crying.

In his dreams, Claire had ripped Aaron forcibly from his arms and then slapped him so hard that his cheek was still smarting when he woke up. It even looked red when he made his way into the bathroom to splash his swollen, tear-streaked face with cold water.

The entire world seemed set against him, Charlie thought miserably as he palpated the tender skin of his cheek with his fingertips. Or rather, both worlds he was in seemed set against him. It was bad enough that he had to cope with his rehab program and all the associated crap that went with it – did he really have to deal with his other self's baggage too?

Charlie splashed his face one more time, dried it with a towel and then headed downstairs for an early breakfast. He figured that if the day was going to be a bad one he might as well get it started earlier and then get it over and done with sooner rather than later.

Because of his previous addiction, the doctor prescribed him Valerian and advised him to become more active in his day to day life so that he would sleep better at night. After several days however, Charlie realised that the drugs weren't having much of an effect on him. His dreams began to repeat themselves in fact – almost like he was going over and over his own failings through his subconscious, around and around in never-ending circles.

The drugs, the hurt look in Claire's eyes, Aaron being torn from his arms, Locke's anger and disbelief...

He woke up crying every night for a week and in the end he decided that it just wasn't worth it.

He stopped taking the pills.

Despite this, his dreams continued to disappoint him. Claire wasn't talking to him anymore and neither were most of the other survivors. His dreams had finally revealed that in a final desperate act to save Aaron, Charlie had lit a fire and while everyone was distracted, he had stolen the infant from Claire. Thankfully he hadn't stolen Meghan from her bed again – instead he woke up early one morning down in the kitchen, the gas burners turned on full bore, and the sink full of water and a collection of Meghan's dolls.

Terrified about what Liam would say if he knew that Charlie had been sleepwalking again, he hoped desperately that he'd stop trying to steal Aaron from Claire – if only so his brother didn't kick him out. To his intense relief however, his dreams quickly shifted over the next two weeks. He dreamt of long hiking expeditions and biting sarcasm, hours of intensive labour spent chopping down trees in silence with the large black man he had seemingly befriended, and lonely hour upon lonely hour spent sitting in a flimsy, makeshift shelter with his guitar in his lap, so miserable that he couldn't even play.

His life with Liam and his family wasn't much better. Because he wasn't allowed to spend any time with Meghan anymore and Karen didn't seem much enamoured of his company either, he took to mooching about in his room with the door locked and his notebooks spread out on his bed, trying to glean some sort of new information from his dreams. He drew endless maps and pictures, trying to remember every infinitesimal detail about the shelters on the beach or the geography of the island. When he grew tired of that he would write endless lists of the names of the other occupants of the island, what they looked like, what his relationship with them was like…

And so it went on.

When he wasn't at home poring obsessively over his notes he spent his time down at the ocean just staring out at the water. Despite the old woman's warnings about his other self's untimely death and Charlotte Malkin's creepy premonitions, Charlie felt inexplicably drawn to the deep, endless blue. He would sit there for hours, losing all sense of time as he meditated, concentrating hard on reaching out to his other self. Sometimes he went so deep into his daydreams that he would start composing songs in his head – hearing them echo back to him across miles of ocean and confused time strands.

Almost a week and a half had passed when Liam came barging through his bedroom door early one evening without even knocking first.

"Charlie," Liam said urgently. "You have to come and see this…"

"See what?" Charlie glowered at his brother as he reshuffled his papers. "In case you haven't noticed I'm a little bit…"

"They've found your plane," Liam said all in a rush. "They found Oceanic 815 in the bottom of an ocean trench just off the coast of Bali…"

Charlie was already up and moving at the word 'plane', Liam trailing after him down the hallway and calling out the rest of the details as Charlie bolted down the stairs.

_No, no, no…it can't possibly be…it just can't…_

But when he came into the lounge room, there it was – tangible and believable and oh-so-real on the television screen. Karen was staring at it, a trembling hand pressed over her mouth. When Charlie came in she turned to him and he saw that she had been crying.

"Charlie?" she said uncertainly.

Charlie ignored her and stared at the television, his jaw somewhere down around his feet as the camera panned slowly along the tail, clearly showing the Oceanic logo. Liam padded up behind him and put what was obviously supposed to be a comforting hand on his shoulder just as a voiceover came blasting over the speakers and they all jumped.

"This shocking footage comes to us streamed direct via satellite from the Christiane I – a salvage vehicle in the Indian Ocean. For nearly two months now it's been scouring the depths of the Sunda Trench off Bali in search of the remains of sunken trading ships…" The footage looped back and began to play again from the beginning as the voice over continued. "…Instead they have found the wreckage of what could only be Oceanic airlines Flight 815 – the plane that disappeared halfway between Sydney and Los Angeles on September 22nd. With the plane now accounted for, and a salvage mission looking very unlikely at this point, authorities have regretfully confirmed that all three hundred and twenty-four passengers are dead…"

"That's bollocks!" Charlie exploded. "They're not dead!" he stormed up to the television and shoved at it angrily. "You've got rocks in your heads!" he roared at the set.

"Charlie!" Karen said, appalled. "Calm down!"

"Calm down?" Charlie wheeled on her. "CALM DOWN!"

Karen shrank back against the wall, her eyes wide with fear. Liam drew himself up to his full (and rather imposing height) and made as if to start yelling at him but Charlie wasn't going to have a bar of it.

"They're wrong!" he yelled, pointing an accusing finger at his brother as though it was his fault that they'd found the plane. "They're not dead!"

"I don't care!" Liam stormed. "Don't you dare speak to my wife like that!"

"Charlie what on earth are you talking about?" Karen said faintly. "They're all dead – they just said so!"

"No," Charlie turned to her appealingly. "You don't understand, I've seen them Karen – I've been dreaming about them all for months. They're still alive!"

Karen and Liam merely stared at him, incredulous and confused.

"Okay look," Charlie said falteringly. "I can't tell you exactly how I know all of this – I don't even understand how it all happened to be honest – but what I ican/i tell you is that there is no way that this…" he paused to gesture angrily at the television set. "…is really Oceanic Flight 815. For one thing, the plane broke into three very distinct pieces when it crashed…"

"Charlie…" Liam began.

"…and for another thing…"

"Charlie, what you're saying is absolutely crazy!" Liam reached forward and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Baby brother…"

"No Liam!" Charlie struggled out of his brother's grip, suddenly hating his old nickname. It had once been an endearment – now he just wanted his brother to take him seriously for once. "It's _real_ okay? I'm not crazy and I'm not delusional! These people are out there and they're waiting to be rescued!"

"Even if they were out there somewhere how are you supposed to help them?" Karen wondered.

"I…look I don't know okay?" Charlie said defensively. "Just…I know they're out there! And I have to save them – people are dying Karen and I can't do anything about it."

"Charlie," Liam grabbed his arm suddenly and forced him to look up at him. "Are you using again?"

Karen looked horrified but Charlie laughed uncertainly.

"Are you serious?"

"You've been doing a lot of the running back and forth to the rehab clinic yourself," Liam pointed out. "It'd be easy enough to sneak off and find yourself a local dealer. And you've been behaving erratically lately, having those weird dreams again…"

"The dreams never _stopped_ Liam," Charlie said bracingly. "I just didn't tell you. And they're not even dreams really. I mean, they're more like…memories..."

"You know you didn't actually answer my question after all of that?" Liam said perceptively. "Are you using or not?"

"No Liam, I'm not!" Charlie snapped and then winced. "Geez...are you trying to break my arm? That bloody hurts!"

Liam released his arm but he still didn't look convinced.

"Tomorrow I'm going to go and check in with the people at the clinic and make sure that you've been coming in to get your daily dose of methadone," he told Charlie.

"Fantastic. You do that then!" Charlie snarled. "They'll tell you that I've been in there every single bloody day since I got here to get my bloody methadone and then again once every week to do my stupid bloody therapy bollocks! They've got it all on record there so you can just stick it up your..."

"Charlie," Liam said warningly. "If you're lying to me and I find out then I'm going to have to ask you to move out of my home."

"Well it's just as well I'm not using then isn't it?" Charlie steamed. "Now if you'll excuse me…"

He tromped up the stairs noisily and slammed the bedroom door shut before sinking down on the bed with his head between his hands. The image of that plane, rusting at the bottom of an ocean trench…it had shaken him to his very bones. Despite his vehement exclamations that there was no way that it could be Flight815 Charlie couldn't help but feel a small niggling of doubt in the back of his brain.

Was he really just going crazy after all?

He thought back to that fateful day almost eight years ago now when the crazy Scottish man had accosted him in the street and then he had taken shelter in the antique shop with the creepy old woman. He hadn't really believed her at first – but she had turned out to be dead on about the plane, hadn't she? It had crashed.

What she hadn't explained very well was the paradox that had occurred when the Scottish man had accidentally changed his future so that he ultimately didn't get on the plane, it had somehow split him in half and now he seemed to be living out two separate lives simultaneously.

He wondered for a moment if his other self was aware of him too and then shook his head to try and clear his thoughts. This time travel and living two separate lives bollocks was bad enough without worrying too much about his other self's wellbeing. And it wasn't like he could really influence what was happening on the island anyway– he'd already tried to change his dreams to no avail.

So the only way he could save these people would be if he somehow found the island that they had crashed on.

"_Bollocks_."

Charlie fell backwards onto his bed and pushed his hands through his hair until it stood on end. How the hell was he supposed to do that? Clearly he was supposed to help them, otherwise he wouldn't be seeing what his other self was seeing. But how could he possibly do anything? He didn't have any money, he didn't even have a job – and he certainly didn't have the resources to create a rescue team. And even he did have the means to do so, he didn't command enough respect to lead anyone – he was a recovering drug addict for Chrissakes!

His thoughts went back to Claire and Aaron – stuck on that horrible piece of sand but instead of feeling a happy glow like he normally did he just felt incredibly sad. Didn't she know how much he wanted to save her? He'd done everything that he could and she still didn't want to have anything to do with him. And the other survivors – they were just as bad! Why hadn't any of them tried to help him when he really needed them? The night that he'd been knocked down by Locke and left to bleed in the surf nobody had stayed to make sure he was okay – not Hurley or Sayid or Jack or even Eko, the priest.

He stood up and began to pace back and forth angrily, finally coming to a stop and slamming his fists down on the chest of drawers with a roar of frustration.

He paused there for a moment, trying to calm himself down, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

Why him of all people? What was so special about him that he'd been chosen for this particular fate? He wasn't physically strong – in fact he tended to turn and run the other way rather than stand and fight. He wasn't a great strategist, a scientist or a doctor. All he'd ever really been good at was making music – and really, he hadn't been that great at that either!

Charlie curled up on his bed in a miserable bundle and pressed his face against his knees, trying not to cry, his fingers digging into the fleshy part of his calves. He slept restlessly that night, dreaming of half finished structures falling down upon his head and a vicious wind that tore around him like a tornado, angrily hissing his name. 

_TBC_...


	6. Chapter 5

**Characters**: Charlie, Liam, Karen, Meghan, Rachel, mentions of Desmond, Claire and various other Lostees.

**Authors**: sapphirechild, pacejunkie and falafelfiction

* * *

It barely even took a day for tributes to start appearing in the newspaper

It barely even took a day for tributes to start appearing in the newspaper. The memorial site that Charlie had visited once before had all but exploded – hundreds of people from all over the world coming to post messages for their loved ones and to donate money to create twin memorials in Sydney and Los Angeles for all those who had died.

Charlie carefully cut out all of Claire's obituaries from the newspaper, a macabre collection that he pinned up in his bedroom along with her now tattered photograph.

Still worried about his brother, Liam had stayed true to his word and checked in with the rehab clinic only to discover to his immense surprise that not only had Charlie been coming in every single day for his methadone, he had also attended every single one of his therapy sessions punctually and was apparently making excellent progress. Still convinced that there was something not quite right about it all, Liam made the decision to administer the methadone to Charlie at home instead.

Charlie couldn't have cared less. He continued on with his rehabilitation more out of habit than out of any real desire to get clean. He had all but lost hope that he could do anything more for Claire and Aaron (or any of the others on the island for that matter) and he had found himself sinking again into the now familiar feeling of abject misery.

All too soon however, Charlie opened the obituaries (as was his habit now) and his eyes alighted on an announcement that there was going to be a ceremony at the end of the week when Oceanic was going to place a memorial stone in the local cemetery for every Australian citizen who had been on board the plane. Charlie grimly crawled out from underneath his misery and decided that he would go to the placing of Claire's – if nothing else then for closure. Nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to.

He borrowed a black button down shirt from his brother, showered and then combed his hair for the first time in days. Sighing heavily, he then set out for the cemetery on foot, cursing Liam's newfound reluctance to let him drive. He had refused to let himself be driven there and back again, like a child.

Despite his paranoia that he was going to be late for the service Charlie stopped briefly at the local supermarket before continuing on. It took him just over an hour to get to the cemetery and by that time everyone else had already found a folding chair to sit on. The congregation had already started but was depressingly small. Charlie hovered indignantly up the back for a moment before sliding into an unoccupied chair.

He made note of a small gaggle of Oceanic employees dressed in their uniforms down the front who sniffled their way appreciatively through the end of a carefully worded eulogy that was being read by a woman who must have been an official spokesperson for the airline. She looked very serious but Charlie could tell that she didn't really care about what she was reading – her eyes said it all. The next person to speak wasn't much better – some old bloke with glasses that the press took about a million photographs of. He babbled on about how it was such a tragedy and how his sympathies went out to all the families who had lost loved ones...

Charlie was just about snoring by the time the final man stepped up. He took one look at his attire however and immediately sat up a little straighter on his flimsy chair. He hadn't been to church in years now but that didn't mean that he had lost his respect for the word of God.

"Blessed are those who mourn," the priest began in a clear, strong voice. "For they will be comforted..."

And Charlie was lost – lost in the priest's words, lost in his silent grief, lost within the self loathing that had settled upon him like a coat of dust ever since the news report had aired. He blinked his way heavily through the short sermon and then shook himself when everyone rose to their feet and made their way to where the memorial stones had been set in orderly rows.

All up there was only about a hundred and Charlie noted grimly that there was nowhere near that many mourners here today. Each and every single memorial stone was identical and they seemed to be set in alphabetical order. The engraving on them detailed the person's name, their date of birth, date of death and then a simple message that read "A victim of the disaster of Oceanic Flight 815".

Charlie came to Claire's stone slowly with measured steps and shallow breaths. He baulked in surprise however when he realised that her inscription was slightly more detailed than everyone else's.

_Claire Littleton_

_(and her unborn child)_

_27/10/1982 – 22/09/2004_

_Victims of the disaster_

_of Oceanic Flight 815_

Charlie stared down at the inscription for a long time before swallowing heavily and reaching into his pocket to pull forth a small jar. Bending down he placed the peanut butter carefully next to her memorial stone feeling both foolish and strangely content.

"Excuse me…" Charlie turned abruptly to see a tall Asian girl standing behind him, a small posy held in her hand. He hadn't heard her coming up behind him. "Um…not to be rude or anything but…who are you?"

"I'm…Charlie," he said awkwardly. "Charlie Pace."

"I'm Rachel," the girl stared at him quizzically, as though trying to figure out if she'd ever seen him before. "You…you knew Claire too?"

Charlie merely nodded and the girl lowered her eyes.

"I went to school with her," she explained thickly. "None of the others wanted to come with me today though. They said they couldn't cope with it."

Charlie wasn't quite sure what to say to that so he didn't say anything and the girl stepped forward and placed her flowers next to his peanut butter, tears sliding suddenly and silently down her cheeks as she straightened up again.

"How did you um…" she paused to wipe the tears off her cheeks, avoiding his eyes. "How did you know Claire?"

"She was…" Charlie began then paused. "We were friends. We had a bit of a…falling out though." He admitted. "I never really got the chance to…you know."

Rachel nodded, still not looking at him.

"She didn't deserve this," she said quietly, her voice choked. "She was such a gorgeous person. I just…I can't believe that she's…"

Charlie didn't say anything as she began to cry again, sobbing in earnest this time. After a moment he reached out an awkward hand and touched her arm. Rachel sniffed heavily at his touch and finally turned to look at him.

"She didn't deserve this," she repeated wretchedly. "And her baby…"

"They're together now though," Charlie said softly. "Wherever they are."

"Yeah," Rachel nodded sadly. "At least they've got each other." Charlie nodded back awkwardly as the girl glanced down at her watch, an unhappy expression creasing her face. "Crap. I have to head back to work."

Rachel hesitated for a moment and then held her hand out to him. Charlie took it gently but he didn't shake it – it didn't really seem appropriate under the circumstances.

"I'm glad I wasn't the only person here for her," she admitted.

"Me too," Charlie said. Rachel squeezed his hand gently and smiled sadly before departing, her high heels sinking awkwardly into the grass.

Charlie watched her go and then turned back to Claire's memorial stone. There were still a few people lingering around, many of them talking to their loved ones, saying goodbye. Charlie stared down at the white marble feeling like somebody had dropped a lead weight onto his chest. He had come here to do the same thing that they all had – to say goodbye and try to move on from all of this. He couldn't afford to try and keep up with his dual self's trials and tribulations any more – it was hard enough to keep his own messed up life in check.

"I thought that I could do this," he said out loud, surprising himself. "I thought that maybe it was fate or destiny or whatever that old bird told me all those years ago. That I was supposed to do this." He laughed suddenly, humourlessly. "Well. I guess she was wrong wasn't she?"

He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts and then continued.

"I'm so sorry Claire," he whispered. "So very sorry but…God I just don't know what else I can do for you." Dropping to one knee, Charlie touched the cool stone that bore her name and felt the weight in his chest grow even heavier with repressed sobs. "I don't know how to save you," he swallowed heavily, trying hard to stop himself from going out in tears. "I don't know how to save any of you! I've tried Claire, I really have but I just…I don't know anymore and I…God I just can't keep doing this!"

He stood abruptly, swiping angrily at his tears with one hand, the other hanging limp at his side. And then, to his great shock, he felt somebody take hold of his hand in a firm, warm grasp. Charlie gasped and his eyes flew shut. He couldn't see anything – but he could feel that he was surrounded by people. There were at least forty of them, all in a tight circle. And right next to him…

He turned his head, his eyes still shut tightly, and was amazed to realise that he could feel Claire's presence beside him, stronger than ever before. He could feel the warmth and pressure of her hand wrapped around his own. She was holding Aaron in her other arm, staring out over an empty space in the middle of the crowd. Charlie ignored the void and tried instead to concentrate on her and her alone.

Suddenly, without really meaning to, he opened his eyes and his hand was empty and he was alone once again in the cemetery in Sydney.

He stood there for a moment, staring at his empty hand – but he didn't feel upset at the loss of contact or frustrated with himself for being unable to stay with her. He felt warm and safe with the lingering presence of Claire's hand imprinted against his own – and along with that warmth, a flicker of hope was rekindled within him.

Since the dreams had first started, he had never experienced such a powerful connection with Claire – especially not when he was awake. Did this mean that their connection was growing stronger along with their relationship? Charlie felt a renewed sense of hope and he smiled as he glanced down once more at her memorial stone before turning his back on the cemetery.

That night he dreamed that he threw the Virgin Mary statues in the ocean one by one and then he joined Claire at her campfire. She fussed over an impressive collection of scrapes and bruises on his arms and then turned her attention instead to his face, touching his cheek gently.

It felt like the first night that he had dreamt about her Charlie thought in amazement. He felt suspended, almost weightless, a split second behind his physical body as Claire gazed at him, her expression so curious and thoughtful that he just wanted to take her face in his hands and…

Charlie caught his breath as she leant forward, pressing her lips softly to his in a kiss that surprised him more then he would have ever cared to admit. As she pulled back from him and his eyes opened, he drifted gently out of the dream too, still smiling quietly to himself as he stared up at the darkened ceiling of his room.

He pushed his way out of bed and snapped on the light, taking down her photograph and staring so hard at it that he thought it might just spontaneously combust. Maybe he could still do this. If it was his destiny (or fate or whatever) to save Claire, to save everyone on the island…well he couldn't just give up now could he? They needed him. Of that he was completely certain now. Why else would he be having these dreams? Why else would the paradox have been created at all?

He slept with the photograph under his pillow that night, the very tips of his fingers touching the silk-soft photographic paper. If he let his mind wander just far enough into his subconscious he could almost imagine that he was actually touching Claire's cheek instead.

* * *

Charlie thought back on his words all the next day. Were they true? Was there really nothing more he could do? He recalled his strange meeting years before with the woman in the antique store. _Don't get on flight 815_, she had said, and he hadn't. What else had she said? He thought hard…

_On Christmas Eve in the year 2004 you will receive a phone call from a woman named Penelope Widmore. She will tell you that she has received a distress call from a young man named Charlie Pace who claims that he is stranded on an island following the crash of Flight 815._

That was it – the missing part of the equation. She had told him that he was supposed to join Penny's team in search of the island. Well there was nothing for it then but to wait for this Penny bird to call him. Christmas was just a few weeks away. She would know what to do.

Charlie emerged from his seclusion to rejoin Liam's family for dinner that night. The atmosphere was thick and awkward as polite conversation was passed around like a basket of bread. Charlie felt slightly ashamed for his outburst of the other day and he was relieved that both Liam and Karen seemed loath to bring it up. Taking his meds from his brother now Charlie felt more dependent than ever and he was beginning to resent the whole situation; but then he realized that they may in turn be regretting their decision to have taken him in so he had to tread softly and do his best to make peace.

"How was the memorial?" Liam finally asked him over the coffee and dessert.

"It was good," said Charlie. "There were quite a lot of people there. I think it really helped me to put closure on the whole thing."

He hated lying to his brother, but Charlie thought it would put his family more at ease to believe that he was moving on. Liam nodded in acknowledgement and not much more was said about it. Karen was still distant as she silently cleared the table and the brothers retired with Meghan to the sitting room.

It had been a hot and humid day, spring rain colliding with a summer that was fast approaching. Sunset wasn't for a few hours but Charlie noticed the sky darken as he sat with the others to watch television. The transition caught his attention and refused to let go. As if he was being beckoned he rose without speaking and walked to the bay window where he could get a clear view of the sky.

"Storm on the way?" asked Liam with mild interest as he played with Meghan and her little toy figurines.

Charlie didn't respond. He was watching the clouds as they tracked across the landscape and thickened, grey and foreboding. His heart started to race with an odd feeling of apprehension. Despite his inexplicable fear, he couldn't tear his eyes away and stayed fixed to the spot even as the clouds ripped open and a deluge of rain came down.

Something was coming.

"Charlie?" called Liam.

Suddenly a bright flash lit up in his eyes with a clap of thunder, but Charlie saw more than lightning. He saw an explosion, white angry sparks and an electrical charge that was headed straight for him with murderous intent, blowing up in his face.

Charlie screamed and dove backwards away from the window, collapsing on the carpet. Meghan looked up too and froze. Normally she wasn't too bothered by thunderstorms but Charlie's reaction set her off and she began to whimper.

Liam was up in an instant to where Charlie lay cowering on the floor, white as a sheet.

"Charlie, what the bloody hell's wrong?"

Charlie was breathless, staring but not seeing. It was after him, the lightning. He started to shake.

"It's gonna hit me," he said in some far off voice, "It's gonna kill me."

Another flash and Charlie screamed again even louder, throwing his arms over his head. Meghan wailed.

Liam grabbed Charlie's hands and tried to pull them away from his face. "Charlie, would you stop acting like a bloody nutter! You're scaring Meghan! Stop this!"

Over the commotion, Karen swooped in and picked her daughter up.

"I'll take her to her room," she said tersely, turned on her heels and disappeared.

Charlie was in a full blown panic at this stage. He curled up into a tight ball and started rocking, each time flinching madly, heart skipping a beat, when another bolt of lightning burst. He didn't understand it himself but it was as if he was watching himself from a distance, unable to control his response.

"It's after me, Liam," he cried.

Liam just gave up and wrapped his arms around his brother, and held him as Charlie sobbed until the storm passed.

* * *

A few days later and Charlie still didn't know what had come over him. He had felt like he was being hunted, as if an enormous shift had occurred and something was now after him, arriving with the storm. After the storm had passed, the panic subsided but that feeling of apprehension remained. Charlie felt jittery and on edge, expectant, jumping at shadows. He went to sleep that night feeling like a child who feared monsters in his closet. His dreams provided little in the way of answers but a new pattern had emerged of increasing danger.

_The priest died. The island killed him. Claire was drowning. And he was here! It was him, the Scottish man who had met him on the street in London, the one who had caused all this! He was on the island too, long haired and bearded. Charlie watched in horror as he dove into the water and brought Claire to shore but she wasn't breathing. Oh my God. Claire! Claire!, he was yelling. The man knew. He had taken off from their place in the jungle and ran right for her. He knew she was going to drown…_

"Wait, how did you know?" Charlie called out in his sleep even as he struggled to stay in the dream and snatch his answers from its jaws. It was no use, he felt it slipping. Awareness was bleeding into his dream, blurring the edges. He could feel his pillow beneath his head. He continued to yell after the man who was now carrying a soaked Claire away in his arms.

"How did you know she was drowning?!"

He didn't realise he had said it out loud until Liam was at his door. He was looking through the crack with concern but stayed at the threshold, as though he was afraid to get too close.

"Everything all right Charlie?" he asked, wearily.

Charlie oriented himself and feeling rather silly, hung his head and muttered, "Yeah. Sorry I woke you."

He was unable to get back to sleep that night, thinking of the Scotsman. He had told Charlie about the island all those years ago, and now it seemed he was there, still predicting events like a bad oracle. And all at once Charlie understood. The man could see the future because he had been through it all before and now as a result of his interference Charlie was living two lives side by side.

He knew the Scottish man had saved Claire but he was still worried for her. It felt as though the danger had not passed. Finally when the sun began to rise and the glow of dawn lit up his room, Charlie threw back the covers, tossed on a dressing gown and went downstairs for some coffee. He stopped halfway down the stairs when he heard the sounds of a hushed conversation wafting up from the kitchen like the aroma of breakfast on the stove.

"My God, Liam, do you realise what could have happened?" Karen was saying in a harsh whisper, her voice breaking.

"I know, Kar," said Liam. "It's lucky I was there, but remember Meghan is fine."

"For now," she said. "But Liam I have a bad feeling about this."

Charlie gripped the handrail tighter and held his breath as he listened. He had hoped Liam wouldn't tell Karen what had happened in the bath with Meghan when he had been sleepwalking, but then again he wouldn't expect his brother to lie to his wife to protect him either.

"I'm watching him," Liam said, trying to appease her. "I won't let Charlie out of my sight from now on if that's what it takes."

"What if it takes more than that?" Karen asked.

"What are you talking about?" said Liam.

"I'm just suggesting that it's _possible_ that Charlie is becoming a bit more than we can handle," she said softly. "His problems…they're getting worse."

"I can handle my brother," snapped Liam.

"But, _should_ you Liam?" she asked. "Now try not to get upset, but…maybe it's time we looked into full time care for Charlie, in a hospital."

Charlie almost let out a gasp but swallowed it down. He stood frozen, trying not to move a muscle, cause the floorboards to creak and betray his presence. But bloody hell, they were talking about having him committed! It took all his energy not to burst in there and defend himself but he knew such a reaction would only play right into Karen's hands, illustrating her case against him perfectly. The last thing he could afford to do right now was to appear unstable. Luckily Liam appeared to be coming to his rescue.

"No. No," Liam was saying. "You want me to abandon my brother to a nuthouse?"

"It's not like that," she pleaded.

"I owe it to him to be there," said Liam, sounding agitated now. Charlie felt for his brother who seemed clearly torn. "I promised."

"Meghan could have _drowned_," Karen said emphatically. "Charlie's outbursts, his nightmares, his erratic behaviour...I'm afraid of what he'll do next. I'm speaking to you honestly Liam. He frightens me."

Liam was silent and Charlie wondered if she was getting to him. He heard the pacing of feet and the creak of a chair. Then Karen continued.

"I love Charlie too, but we're not doing him any favours by keeping him here if he's not getting the help he needs. You promised to take care of him, Liam, and this is what has to be done, for everyone's well being, Charlie's _and_ ours."

Charlie crept back up to his room as lightly as possible. He didn't wait to hear Liam's response – he didn't need to. His time was running out. He just needed to delay things until Christmas, until Penny called. If he could manage to avoid getting locked up before then, he might just get to the bottom of this and prove to his brother that he wasn't losing his mind.

He was on borrowed time in more ways than one. That feeling of impending doom had returned, and it wasn't just the reality of his situation that was causing it. The other Charlie on the island was feeling it too and Charlie understood that now, because when he went to sleep that night he met the Scotsman again, and this time the prophet was speaking to him. Charlie heard words that chilled him right through, as though he had been impaled on the very letters.

"_No matter what I try to do…you're gonna die Charlie."_

* * *

When Liam gave gifts they were often surprising. At some point in their lives Charlie must have grown accustomed to the forgotten birthdays and the crummy Christmas presents and his brother's feeble excuses for both. Then suddenly and unexpectedly, Liam would bestow a gift that proved to Charlie once and for all that his older brother truly did care about him; that he wasn't just a selfish inconsiderate prat who was only helping him to relieve his own sense of guilt and because it was what his wife expected of him. Charlie still remembered that Christmas morning in Finland when Liam had given him their great grandfather's ring. It had been one of the most perfect moments of his life. Charlie hadn't thought that it was possible for Liam to come up with a gift that meant more to him than the ring. But it turned out Liam could still surprise him.

Charlie had just finished his last session at the rehab clinic. When he got back to Liam's house he made his way directly upstairs, planning to take a late afternoon nap. He stepped through the door to find Liam had cleared a large space in the corner of the spare room...

...in this space there was a brand new piano.

Charlie blinked and stared at the instrument for a moment, half wondering whether it was some sort of vision - like his dream where a piano had magically appeared on the beach and he had heard the baby crying inside it before both were swept out to sea. Charlie gently lifted up its lid, stroking his fingers over its smooth white keys and pressing down gently on his favourite of its notes. The keys out sang divinely. The piano was real.

Suddenly he felt a hand pressing his shoulder.

"Looks like Father Christmas brought your present early, baby brother..."

He turned to see Liam standing at his side. Charlie winced at the sound of his voice. In the last week, Liam had started speaking to him as if he were a child, using the same cooing tones as when he spoke to Meghan. There was a hint of desperation in his smile.

"This is from Karen and me," Liam explained, "a 'well done' for getting through withdrawal and rehab. I know only too well it isn't easy, baby brother. We're proud of you."

Charlie flushed. "Oh Li...but this must have cost you..."

""Don't worry! We can afford it. Besides I needed to make up for..."

Liam's voice trailed away. He bowed his head.

For the piano you stole from me, Charlie thought. He knew Liam was thinking the same thing, but neither of them voiced it. Charlie had already accepted Liam's remorse. Now he just wished that he could assure Liam that it wasn't his fault that his mind was in this fractured state. But he imagined that from Liam's perspective there was no other conceivable cause.

Liam turned to face him, placing his hands on Charlie's shoulders and looking him firmly in the eye as he always did when he had something important to say.

"Do something for me, baby brother, alright? I want...I want you to start writing again. Music, Charlie. That's all I want you to concentrate on for the next few weeks. No more obsessing about that bloody plane crash, yeah? I'll be expecting to hear a new batch of songs for Christmas. That's the only present I want from you this year..."

Charlie sighed. He knew it was impossible to detach his mind from the plane crash and the island where its survivors were stranded. But he also found it impossible to say 'no' to his brother when he looked him in the eye and asked him for something.

"I'll try my best, Liam..."

In the following week Charlie discovered that he could keep his promise to his brother, whilst keeping his secret connection to the island. If anything the music seemed to strengthen his psychic bond to his other life. When he played he seemed to fall into a trance. If Charlie lost himself in his music then he could see the island vividly in his mind's eye. He saw the people too – his campmates, his friends. He saw their faces clearer than ever. He could no longer hear what they were saying to him - the music drowned their voices - but he could feel them so close it was like he was touching them.

The first song Charlie wrote was a tribute to the large fuzzy haired man who he had come to consider his best friend. This song was an upbeat honky tonk number that lifted up his spirits and brought a giddy smile to his lips whenever he played it. It was the sort of tune you would have blasting on your car stereo while on a joyride through the city.

A few days later Charlie found himself writing a more sombre ballad, a song filled with shame and regret. He wrote this song for the Korean lady with the soft brown eyes. Every time he saw this woman Charlie felt horribly guilty as if he had hurt her or wronged her. His mind threw shadows over the memory of his crime against her, but the song was his confession and apology. He didn't expect the Korean woman to like it, but he still needed to write it for her...and for himself.

Charlie would have liked the time to write a song for every member of the camp. He could have written one for the Arab soldier with the heavy eyes who he often saw fixing little gadgets in quiet shady patches of the beach. He would have liked to write a song for the older black woman who sometimes joined him for prayers under the framework of his church. He could have written a song for the hard-faced man with the crooked glasses who sat reading outside his tent. He would even have liked to have written one for the dog who roamed around their campsite with a Frisbee in his mouth. He would write a song for all of them if he had time. But with his time running rapidly short Charlie felt all he wanted to compose were love songs for Claire and lullabies for her child.

Charlie sat at the piano from the moment that he woke in the morning to the time that he fell asleep late at night. As he tapped out the notes Charlie started to feel like his music was some sort of...well _code_. If he could only get the melody of this code right then somehow his music might be able to save those people.

It was a lazy December afternoon when Charlie decided that he wanted to write a song for the Scottish man who had taken to repeatedly saving his life. He didn't think the piano was the right instrument for the Scottish man's song. He felt compelled to return to his acoustic guitar - the instrument he had been playing on the day of their fateful meeting in London. After stringing together a set of chords and scribbling down some notations, Charlie sat strumming on his bed. He let his eyes fall closed and found himself on the beach again.

_He could see the Scottish man crouching before him. He was smiling, though there was something shifty about his smile. It felt like he was hiding something from him. But Charlie trusted this man. He was the key to this whole mystery after all. And now the Scotsman was asking him to go somewhere with him. Charlie was only too happy to come along. He strummed for a little longer...then he_ _started to whistle.  
_  
_As Charlie fell deeper into his trance he found himself sitting around a campfire with his fuzzy haired friend and the Korean fisherman. They were telling ghost stories and toasting marshmallows, laughing uproariously together. Charlie looked around for the Scottish man. He noticed him sitting alone on the outskirts of their camp; staring intently at a photograph. Charlie approached him, offering him a can of food and asking about his picture. The Scottish man hesitated for a moment and then passed him the photograph to see for himself. It was a picture of the Scotsman with his arms wrapped around a beautiful young woman with misty blue eyes and golden hair that spilled over her shoulders._

_"Her name's Penny..." the Scotsman told him._

Charlie's eyes flew open. The guitar tumbled from his lap, its neck smacking against the bed frame, damaging the frets and snapping several of its strings. Charlie didn't even wince. He scrambled for his dream diary, turning to the page that he had marked out for Christmas Eve. On this page he had written in block capitals the words 'PENNY CALLS!' Charlie grabbed a pen and scribbled furiously beneath this heading.

_Penny and the Scottish man! There's a connection! She's his sodding **girlfriend! **Of course! It all fits. It's all coming together now. Bloody hell!_

Charlie spent the rest of the night pacing in his darkened room. He had always had faith in Penny's call and now he knew her reason for wanting to find the island. He was certain now that Penny would call him, just as certain as the Scottish man seemed to be that she was coming to rescue him. In the days that followed Charlie found his heart leaping every time the phone rang. The sound filled him with both excitement and dread. He really wanted to meet this Penny girl.

If she was in love with the Scottish man then Charlie would finally have someone who understood how it felt to be on a desperate search for an unreachable person. Charlie felt himself counting the days and as the days grew shorter he counted the hours too. Time was like sand running through his fingers. Part of him wanted to let time spill out, another part of him wanted to clasp hold of it...because at the back of his memory he knew what was going to happen before the call came.

On the morning of December 22nd Charlie woke up with the Scottish man's voice in his ear.

"I'm sorry, brother. But this time...this time you have to die."

Charlie blinked his eyes, waking up with a chill in his bones and a sick sinking feeling in his gut. He knew that the Scottish man spoke the truth. There could be no more respite. After a long time staring up at the ceiling Charlie slowly rose from his bed and dressed himself in mechanical movements. He gazed at his piano for a moment, but found he didn't feel like playing today. Maybe he was terrified of experiencing his other self's thoughts as he came to terms with his imminent demise. Maybe he just wanted to give the guy some privacy; not intrude upon him in his sensitive state.

Instead Charlie chose to spend some quality time with Liam, Karen and Meghan. He helped them put up their Christmas decorations. He pitched in with the cooking and tidying. Karen wanted the house spotless for when her relatives came around for Christmas dinner. Charlie was only too happy to help with the chores. He needed to keep himself occupied otherwise he was going to slip into his other self's thoughts. He wanted distance from the island right now. He didn't want to feel himself drowning in it. So every time he completed one task he would eagerly ask Karen if there was anything else he could do.

"I appreciate your help," Karen said awkwardly as she soaped up the dishes that Charlie was drying and putting away. "But you're free to go upstairs and practise your music if you like, Charlie. I think we are almost organised..."

Charlie smiled nervously. He feared he was annoying Karen, buzzing around her house like a fly. He didn't want to be a burden or a nuisance to her. He stared at his sister in law and suddenly he felt like he was cherishing his time with her. He was starting to realise that these sweet simple days he had spent in her house would soon be coming to an end.

"You...you look beautiful today, Karen..." he murmured.

The words just tumbled out of Charlie's mouth. Karen regarded him with surprise and uncertainty.

"Well, thank you, Charlie. You know, I might look a little fresher once I've got these rubber gloves off and I've had a chance to run a comb through my hair, but..."

"You're a very beautiful person," Charlie rambled on. "You've got such a beautiful family. I'm really...I'm so grateful that I'm part of your family. I just...I love you all so much. You know that, right? Liam knows I love him, doesn't he?"

"Of course, Charlie!" she exclaimed. "We love you too."

Charlie nodded, struggling to compose himself. "I just wanted to tell you. I just wanted you to know...just in case...I don't get another chance to say it."

Karen frowned at him; a look of fearful concern lighting in her eyes.

"What do you mean?" she asked sharply.

"Nothing!" He tried to smile, wishing to dispel her worries. "I'm sorry I..."

Charlie felt himself losing it. His hands were shaking and hot tears were spilling over his eyelids. Karen quickly stripped off her gloves and pulled him into a hug. They stood together for a moment, as Charlie wept against the soft wool of her cardigan. He clung to Karen like she was a life buoy in the middle of an ocean. When Charlie finally raised his head he saw Liam standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his face pinched and considerate.

"Charlie's just come over all sentimental," Karen said softly.

Liam reached out a hand and stroked it through his brother's hair.

"Chin up mate," he said stiffly. "Don't cry...you'll upset Meghan."

Charlie nodded and sucked up his tears. He sat down in a quiet corner of the living room, watching Meghan giggle as she watched the Muppets Christmas Carol on TV. Later that evening Karen came in to read her daughter her bedtime story. Charlie didn't try to get involved or interrupt. Karen glanced at him with a pitying stare and even asked him if he would like to read at one point. But Charlie shook his head and kept his eyes turned down. The book Karen was reading was 'Alice Through the Looking Glass'. For some reason the story was making Charlie's skin crawl. He didn't want to be alone right now, but it felt like the island was invading his every moment.

Charlie excused himself and fled up the stairs. When he stepped into his bedroom he noticed that his guitar strap, several of his ties and various sharp objects had mysteriously disappeared from his shelves and drawers. Liam must have crept in and removed them while he was watching TV. Charlie rolled his eyes. They were making the house suicide proof. He supposed he had set himself up for that.

His day of busy chores had left him feeling exhausted. At first he thought he might sleep easily tonight. When he slipped into his dreams he found that they weren't as vivid as usual. His dreams were filmy and blurred...

Then Charlie realised why.

He was underwater.

_TBC_... 


	7. Chapter 6

**Characters**: Charlie, Liam, Doctor, with mentions of Desmond and Penny.

**Authors**: pacejunkie and falafelfiction.

* * *

_This is it_, Charlie realised. _He felt his throat constricting and his heartbeat thundering in his chest. He was deep in the ocean, so deep that it was growing dark. He felt himself kicking his back legs, his arms clawing back the water that felt thick as soup. He pushed and fought his way forwards. There was a light up ahead of him. Dying people always see lights don't they? But this light was shining on...what looked like a surface..._

Charlie jerked upright in bed and took a sharp breath into his lungs.

He was drenched in sweat, wide eyed and panting. Once his breathing settled, he released a nervous fearful laugh. He had been worried for a moment there. But no, his other self hadn't died. _It's_ _okay_, he told himself, feeling his pulse slow again, _I'm alive!_ Maybe he wasn't going to die after all. Charlie felt giddy like he had been leaning over the edge of a cliff and had only pulled himself back at the last moment...

He lay back on his pillow and stared at the moon through the window for a while. But then he realised that a chill was slowly spreading over his skin and goosebumps were rising on his arms. Grimly he realised that it wasn't quite over yet. His limbs began to stiffen. His chest and wrists felt as if they were being constricted by a thick coarse rope. Charlie still didn't dare close his eyes. But after a few more minutes of lying awake his head began to throb. It felt as if somebody were beating him around the face. He wanted to stand up and pace the room, but he felt certain his body would seize up and collapse if he tried.

So Charlie sat huddled in bed, sweating and wincing through most of the night. The pain in his head was slowly increasing. At one point his nose began to bleed. He had to hold his sleeve to his nostrils to stem the flow. Charlie chewed his lip, trying to stop himself from crying out. He knew exactly what was happening. His other self was being beaten and interrogated. He could feel the blows and the binding securing him to a chair. It felt like he was experiencing sympathy pains for this other Charlie. He had heard that identical twins sometimes share a certain telepathy, that they could feel each other's pain and emotions over hundreds of miles. Charlie spent the whole night in terror and agony.

He thought morning would never come, but eventually the light crept into his room. When Charlie heard Liam and Karen breakfasting downstairs in the kitchen, he got out of bed and sat down at his piano. He took out a fresh page of sheet music and held a pencil between his teeth ready to scribble down the notes as they came to him. He flinched at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Liam stuck his head around his door.

"Do you fancy some cereal, Charlie?" he asked. "A cup of coffee maybe?"

Charlie shook his head frantically. "I'm fine, Li. Listen...can you do me a favour? Just...don't interrupt me for the next hour or so, okay? I really feel the need to concentrate on this new song. But I'll come downstairs as soon as it's finished."

Liam nodded with a reluctant understanding, but he still seemed suspicious of him and carefully left the bedroom door ajar. Charlie sighed and turned back to his piano. He had written so many songs for his friends on the island, but he had yet to write a song just for himself. Or rather his _other_ self. He decided he would write that song now. He hoped this song would reach this other Charlie somehow and distract him from the raining blows of his captor's fists and the terrible fear of his looming death.

The melody came naturally in a slow steady ripple of notes. The song had a watery feel, but it wasn't the kind of water that suffocated and drowned you. This was the sort of water that cleansed you, refreshed you and washed away your sins. Charlie played the melody a few times over. Then he closed his eyes and he heard another voice singing and finding lyrics to fit with his music. Charlie realised that he was accompanying his other self. They were writing this song together. They had never been closer than this.

_"I told you to shut up!" said a voice, cutting through their melody._

"You know when you get a tune stuck in your head? This song...it just started coming to me. It's almost finished. I just need to find the bridge..."

Charlie almost laughed. It seemed like his other self was dedicating his final moments to driving his captor's up the wall. His smile faltered when it occurred to him that this Charlie who was imprisoned in the underwater station really had resigned himself to his fate now. He was starting to feel a pinch of survivor's guilt. He couldn't help feeling that if one of them needed to be eliminated from the universe...then it really ought to be him. This other Charlie was twice the man that he was. Claire and Aaron needed him. Charlie would have fallen down on his knees and begged for the forces of fate to take his life instead. But he was too bloody scared. He wasn't ready to die yet. He wasn't prepared for it...not like his other self was. So he just kept on playing.

He kept playing until...

...his feet were numb on the pedals.

Pins and needles, Charlie told himself, shaking his feet. He blinked his eyes and tried to focus on his sheet music. His breath caught in his throat. He didn't remember writing it...but suddenly there was a message scrawled over his notations...

A message that read _'Not Penny's Boat'_...

Charlie rose from his chair and paced the room, trying to clear his head and get some feeling back into his limbs. But this wasn't ordinary pins and needles. His feet were freezing. The chill was quickly spreading up his legs and crawling up his chest. He started to feel strangely weightless like he was being lifted from the floor. Charlie sat down, grasping the carpet hairs in his fingers, but it didn't help. The creeping numbness was above his head now. He couldn't breathe. He felt his head hitting the floor. His body was flopping all over the place. He was drowning like a fish in the air...

Suddenly a pair of strong arms lifted him by the shoulders.

"Jesus Christ, Charlie!" It was Liam's voice, hitching with fury and terror. "What did you do? What did you take?! What sodding drugs have you taken?!"

Charlie shook his head, trying to turn away from Liam's accusing glare, but his brother was gripping the side of his face. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and...

_...there was a small round window. There was a face on the other side of the glass and a hand pressing against his own. At first he thought this was his own reflection, but no. It was the Scottish man. The man who had been the herald of all this. Charlie pushed away from him now...he pushed back into...into darkness. Sightlessness. Weightlessness. It was almost like returning to the womb. But even so…Charlie could not understand why his other self was so bloody calm. The thing that was scaring him most was not the cold water that surrounded him. It was the body that floated through this water, refusing to fight and struggle...giving into its own merciless death..._

"Breathe, Charlie!" Liam cried in desperation. "Breathe!"

But Charlie couldn't breathe. If he tried to breathe the seawater would pour into his throat and choke him. He felt his mouth filling with foam. It bubbled from the corners of his lips as he clenched his teeth together and his body convulsed on the rug. His vision was growing fainter now, his eyes darkening as his connection with the island rapidly began to fade. He couldn't feel his body or even hear his own thoughts anymore. He was just a pair of lungs, burning with the desire for air. But even the pain would melt away soon...very soon there would be nothing at all.

Charlie was only dimly aware that Liam was lifting him from the carpet and carrying down the stairs in his arms.

"Karen!! Get the car started! We're taking him to the hospital..."

* * *

"He's been acting odd," Liam confessed. "Mood swings and panic attacks, that sort of thing. Then just the other day he starts telling us that he loves us and crying and…well, at first I thought it was a suicide attempt…"

Liam stood in the hospital corridor, speaking in a low murmur to the doctor who had taken charge of his brother's case. Charlie had been revived in the emergency room and admitted for testing. Now they were just trying to fathom what had happened to him.

"Has he been taking any medications recently?" the doctor asked.

"Well, he's taking methadone for heroin withdrawal, but…" Liam frowned. "But I've been giving him that. He never takes it by himself."

"Any chance he might have stolen it and taken too much?"

Liam shook his head, "I checked it this morning. I started keeping it under lock and key once I suspected he might do something like this. I don't know what he could have gotten his hands on. Just check for everything, yeah?"

Karen had to take Megan back home so Liam sat alone in the family area, waiting for news and feeling a sympathetic pain in his chest. He had hoped the piano might be the thing to give Charlie a new focus in his life. But maybe it had been little more than a fool's hope. He was quickly coming to the conclusion that Karen was right, and he had just been refusing to accept the harsh reality that his brother would require more care than Liam could give. He wondered how Charlie would take the news.

Three hours later the doctor returned with the results of Charlie's workup.

"Well, Mr. Pace," the doctor began as he sat down next to him, "I hope you'll consider this to be good news but I am extremely perplexed."

"What do you mean?" Liam asked, "Did you find out what he took?"

"Nothing, according to our toxicology tests," the doctor said, reading from the chart in his hands. "We found no substances whatever in his system apart from the approved amount of methadone that you had informed me of. Nothing more."

Liam breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, that's good. But if it wasn't an overdose then what happened?"

"That's just it," the doctor said, shaking his head, "There is nothing physically wrong with him. It wasn't a reaction to the methadone, the drug wasn't tainted and he's been taking it without adverse reaction for quite some time now. We've tested him for everything from poison to asthma to cardiac arrest, all negative. He's perfectly healthy; we simply can't find a cause for his sudden inability to breathe."

"So, what does that mean? Can he come home?" asked Liam.

"I see no reason to keep him here now that he's stable. But I've ordered a consultation with Psychiatry and pending their report, he'll be discharged, with a possible diagnosis of anxiety and depression I suspect."

So Liam waited another two hours while Charlie met with the Psychiatrist. After an exasperating wait, Liam was finally allowed in to see his brother. Charlie was already up and dressed when he arrived, getting ready to leave.

"Hey," said Liam, entering the room slowly, "how're you feeling?"

Charlie looked up and then back down at the shoe he was tying, "They're telling me it was a panic attack. They're prescribing anti-depressants and anxiety meds now."

"Well, that's good right?" said Liam. "Maybe they'll help."

"I don't need them," Charlie muttered, still not meeting his eye. "Everybody thinks I'm crazy but I'm not. I know exactly what's happening to me."

"I…I don't think you're crazy Charlie," Liam lied, sitting down on the bed next to him. "But if you know what's going on, I wish you'd clue me in. You can tell me anything, baby brother! But if it has to do with that bloody plane crash..."

Charlie glared at Liam, sprang up and started for the door. "Let's just go home, Li."

Charlie was silent the entire trip and Liam felt helpless. He knew his brother was holding back but he had no idea what could have caused him to stop breathing like he had, or to nearly drown his daughter or suddenly go barking mad over a thunderstorm for that matter. None of it was making sense to him but he knew once he got home, Karen would once again bring up the subject of an institution, and Liam didn't think he had any cards left to play that would dissuade her.

* * *

When they arrived home, Charlie went straight to his room without a word and shut the door. Once he was alone, he pulled the two bottles of pills they had given him out of his pocket and tossed them in the trash. Then he threw himself down on the bed, thinking back on all that had just happened.

His other self had died now. He was sure of it. His connection to the island was now completely severed. A heavy gloom came over him as he grieved for his lost twin. It truly had felt like a part of him had died too - his better part, no less. The other Charlie had friends, a girl he loved, and a baby who was like a son to him. The tragedy of it struck him and he choked on his tears. It was him and yet it wasn't; Charlie didn't know if he could ever be that person that had given his life so heroically. Yet he was the one the universe had chosen to preserve.

He had grown so accustomed to his other life playing constantly in the background like music. Now his world was too quiet. It felt like he was carrying a ghost around inside him. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on those people he had come to know but nothing came to him. Somehow he knew when he went to bed that night he would sleep the dreamless sleep of the dead. Charlie was now utterly dependant on that call from Penny to re-establish his link to the island.

He stayed in his room all day. Liam didn't bother him again until evening.

"Charlie?" he said, poking his head into the dark room. "Dinner's almost ready if you'd like to join us."

"Tell Karen thanks, but I'm not hungry," Charlie muttered from the bed.

Liam sighed, turned on the light and entered fully. "Baby brother, there's something we need to talk about…"

"If it's about sending me away to a padded room I already know about that," Charlie said darkly. "I heard you and Karen talking about it the other day."

Liam grimaced, "You know I'd rather cut off my arm, right? This is hard for me."

Charlie sat up abruptly, "Hard for _you_?! Are you joking? Do you have any idea what this has been like for _me_?"

"No, Charlie!" cried Liam. "Now that you mention it, I don't! That's the whole sodding trouble. So how about you come clean with me? What the bloody hell is going on with you?"

"You promise you'll hear me out, no matter how it sounds?" said Charlie.

"All right, I promise," said Liam, settling in to listen.

Charlie spoke for twenty minutes, starting with his first encounter with the Scotsman in London all those years before and the strange warnings from the lady in the antique shop. He told him about the plane, the other passengers he was dreaming about and the parallel existence he'd been experiencing since the crash with the other Charlie on the island. Finally, he explained about the other Charlie drowning and the call he would get from the Scottish man's girlfriend Penny that would lead him back to the island with a rescue team.

Liam didn't interrupt once but the longer Charlie went on, the more strangely Liam looked at his brother, straining to follow as if Charlie were someone he didn't know at all and was speaking in a foreign tongue. When he was finished, Charlie feared he had accomplished little more but to convince his brother that having him committed was the right thing to do.

"Look," said Charlie when Liam had still not responded, "I know what you must think of all this…"

"Charlie, even if this were all true," Liam interrupted, "It doesn't solve my problem. I still have to be concerned for Meghan's safety and Karen isn't comfortable with you in the house anymore. You've got to see things from my side!"

Charlie snorted, realising that Liam hadn't considered a single thing he had said.

"So you're choosing your family over me again?" he muttered bitterly.

Liam threw up his hands, "I'm trying to _help_ you, you ungrateful wanker!"

"You can't help me!" Charlie snapped back. "All I need from you is time…time to prove I'm not crazy."

"And how are you going to do that?"

"So far everything the lady from the antique shop told me has come true," Charlie explained. "All that's left is Penny. She's supposed to call me on Christmas Eve. All I'm asking is that you hold off on your decision to call in the men in white coats to pack me off to the funny farm until after Christmas. Just see if I'm right."

When Liam didn't answer, Charlie went on.

"You can lock me up in my room if it makes Karen feel better. I'll stay away from Meghan. Anything you want. Just give me one more day Liam."

It was December twenty-third. One more day to see if this Penny would call and if not, then he would have no choice but to do what Karen wanted.

"Okay," said Liam. "I'll fix it with Karen. You should spend Christmas with us anyway. She'll understand. But Charlie, if you're wrong about this," Liam continued warningly. "I won't be able to do anything for you."

"I know, but don't worry," he said. "She'll call. She has to."

_TBC_...


	8. Chapter 7

Characters: Charlie, Liam, Karen, Meghan, Penny and Donovan.

Authors: pacejunkie and falafelfiction

* * *

When Donovan heard that Penny's transmission to the island had finally been answered, he had changed his holiday arrangements and travelled from Oxford to London. By the following night Donovan was standing outside her home in London. He knocked three times on the door, but received no answer. It was early evening and the lights were shining out of all her windows, so she was most definitely awake. Donovan frowned and tapped his foot impatiently; then he pressed his ear to her door. Music was blasting from a record player inside; the _Voi Che Sapete_ aria from Mozart's 'Le nozze di Figaro'. Donovan smiled, remembering that this was Penny's favourite opera. She had taken Desmond to see it for their first date. He opened up his brief case and rummaged inside for the spare key that Penny had given him. Then he let himself into her house.

Donovan found Penny in the living room. She was curled up on the sofa wearing a white turtleneck, black trousers and slippers. There was an open bottle of champagne in an ice bucket by her elbow and an empty glass in her hand. She was flushed and smiling. Donovan smiled too. He hadn't seen her so happy in years.

"I take it that Desmond called…?" said Donovan.

Penny sat upright, her eyes watering at the corners.

"He called Donovan!" she confirmed. "Desmond called! Just like he said he was going to all those years ago. Can you believe it? I'm not crazy!"

Donovan took off his coat and turned down her music. He deposited his Christmas present under her tree and then sat beside her on the sofa.

"I never thought you were crazy, Penelope dear." He raised an eyebrow and took the glass from her hand. "Though I do believe you're drunk."

"Tipsy!" Penny insisted, raising a finger. "_Please_. I haven't had an occasion to celebrate in years, Donovan. I never thought this day would come!"

"What did Desmond tell you?" Donovan asked her, eagerly.

Penny closed her eyes. "He said loved me. He said he's always loved me…"

"Well, that's splendid," said Donovan, still smiling but growing steadily impatient. "Did he tell you anything that will help with our research?"

Penny was startled out of her rapture. "Well…he said he was on a boat."

"A boat?" Donovan shuffled forward on the sofa cushions. "Desmond must be on the boat that Charlie told you about. The boat that this mysterious Naomi woman sent. What have you managed to find out about this Charlie Pace?"

"He's Desmond's friend," Penny said dreamily. "He was the one who told me that Desmond was still alive. That was when I knew that I…"

Donovan sighed. He realised that Penny wasn't going to be much use tonight. Her mind was consumed with thoughts of Desmond and she would have trouble focusing on anything else. Penny was an intelligent woman and an efficient researcher, but she was also a lover. Right now she was blathering romantic mess.

"Would you mind if I used your computer?" Donovan asked.

Penny waved her hand in consent, closing her eyes and retreating into her happy daze. Donovan seated himself at her desk and switched on her laptop. The first thing he did was to type the words 'Charlie Pace' and 'Flight 815' into the internet search engine. This was just a rudimentary check, making sure the transmission Penny had received was genuine.

Donovan was surprised to find there were very few results for his search. This immediately struck him as odd since he knew there had been an exhaustive amount of media on that ill-fated flight. The one article he could find was perplexing. It was a small piece in the Sydney local press about a young musician from the defunct rock band Driveshaft who had cheated death by missing his plane. Flight 815. It mentioned that following this lucky escape Charlie Pace had gone into drug rehab, seemingly making the most of his second chance in life. Donovan shook his head, thinking he must have clicked on a bogus source. Then he found a printed copy of the flight manifest which confirmed that a C.H. Pace had indeed purchased a ticket for the doomed flight, but he had never boarded the plane.

Donovan couldn't make sense of it. He tried a search on the band 'Driveshaft'. He found a small fan site which didn't look like it had been updated in a few years. But there were still several photos on the homepage. These pictures were mostly of the band's handsome lead singer, but Donovan managed to find one clear shot of their bass player. The photo depicted a small, impish man in his early twenties, wearing what Donovan supposed would be called punk fashion. A white tie hung outside his striped T-shirt. There were pink streaks in his messy blonde hair and chipped black polish on his nails.

"Penny, could you come here for a moment?" Donovan asked.

Penny tottered to her feet and wandered over to the monitor. Donovan enlarged the picture of the bass player so that she could see it clearly.

"Is this the man who received your transmission?" he asked.

"Yes!" she affirmed, recognition flashing in her eyes. "That's him! That's our boy…"

She grinned at the screen in triumph. Donovan took a breath.

"Penny…it says in this article that Charlie Pace never boarded Flight 815. For the last three months he has been living in Sydney, in Australia."

Penny's smile fell and she gaped at him in confusion.

"What?" she exclaimed. "No, that can't be true. Charlie was on the island. He was with Desmond. He must have been on the island if he answered my transmission. I mean…he can't be in two places at once. Can he?"

Donovan swallowed. He hadn't thought that this were possible. Really there was only one conceivable way it could have happened.

"Penny...we need to contact this man immediately."

* * *

The Pace family were sitting around the picnic table on their back patio the next day, enjoying sandwiches, lemonade and other light fare. The big Christmas dinner would come tomorrow but for now they sat outside until dusk and watched Meghan play in her sandbox, the setting sun providing a respite from the sweltering heat of the day. Charlie turned to Liam and Karen.

"So where's the snow, guys?" he joked.

Karen laughed. "Not in Australia I'm afraid. We've had to grow accustomed to hot summer Christmas seasons."

"To Meghan it will all be normal," Liam pointed out, "It will be up to us to tell her how our Christmases were different."

Charlie nodded, still forcing a smile till his jaw ached and trying to convince them he wasn't a crazed manic depressive. He needed to keep up appearances so he could stay in their house long enough to receive Penny's call. Otherwise this whole thing would fall apart. Charlie felt he was still in mourning for his other self and his connection to the island, a pain that was lodged deep in his chest like a blocked artery. But at the same time his mind was no longer breaking in two. He was finally living in the moment, without distractions. The feeling infused him with new energy; a sense of clarity that had turned out to be good for his productivity. Earlier that day Charlie had managed to finish the songs he had been writing for Liam and his family as Christmas presents. He had also found the time to repair his guitar and after dinner, he treated everyone to a performance.

Meghan twirled and jumped to her gift; a bouncy, simple child's tune called _Black and White_. For Liam, Charlie had written a churning rock-n-roll number that he called _Monster Eats the Pilot_, based on a title that had been in his head for weeks, while for Karen, he had dedicated a soft simple ballad called _Walk with Me_ which featured sandy beaches and lush tropical breezes in its lyrics. It was a romantic sort of song and Charlie had been thinking about Claire when he wrote it. Everyone laughed, sang along and applauded.

When darkness settled fully they cleared the table, and moved the festivities inside. Meghan was treated to one gift to stem her excitement. Her eyes lit up at the large plush white rabbit toy which she immediately dubbed Hoppy and insisted on taking to bed with her. A short while later Karen took her up to her room.

Karen's aunt and uncle who lived in Sydney were joining them tomorrow, so for the evening it was the Pace family, sitting around the tree. Charlie and Liam regaled Karen with stories from their childhood and Karen beamed at how happy the brothers seemed. As enjoyable as it was, Charlie couldn't help but gaze over at the clock periodically to check the time. Although Liam caught him doing it, he didn't need to ask Charlie what he was doing. They were both waiting anxiously, their ears straining for the phone to ring.

It finally happened at a quarter past ten. Charlie nearly jumped out of his seat. When Karen got up to answer it, he settled back down but remained tense, feeling his stomach do flips. Liam stared at Charlie like he had seen a ghost.

"Charlie?" Karen called, sounding surprised. "It's a woman calling for you."

Charlie felt relief coursing through his veins. He glanced quickly at his brother and then went to retrieve the phone, taking it in the kitchen.

"Hello?" he answered. "This is Charlie..."

"Charlie…um…my name is Penelope Widmore. I'm not quite sure where to begin but…is my name familiar to you at all? I believe we may have met recently over a radio transmission. You said that you were a survivor of flight 815."

Charlie's head swam. This was going to take a bit of explaining if she was under the impression he was the Charlie who had drowned.

"I was told you would call me," Charlie said softly. "Christmas Eve, 2004. I've been waiting. I was meant to take flight 815, but I never did. Still…I think that something happened. That Charlie you spoke to…it _was_ me on the island. But I'm here too. I know this is confusing but a few years back I met this Scottish bloke and I think he changed my path. Since the crash I've been seeing the island and the survivors and…it's like I was there! I could sort of…_feel_ him, the other Charlie. Do you know what's happening to me?"

There was a pause. He could hear Penny talking to someone in the background. He waited patiently for a response. I needed to know the truth.

"Charlie, that man you met was Desmond Hume…" said Penny.

"Desmond…" Charlie repeated. "His name's Desmond…"

_That sounded right_, he thought; it was almost like he had known it all along.

"Yes…you weren't the only one Desmond spoke to back then," Penny explained. "He told a friend at Oxford that he believed he had travelled back from that future. When Desmond went missing that friend came to me with everything he knew and suspected. If Desmond changed things in his past he may have created a sort of paradox where you didn't get on the plane…but at the same time you had already done so. I can assure you this paradox is real because I spoke to you yesterday. You told me you were on an island with other survivors. Your voices are identical. It's bizarre, I grant you..."

"So what happens now?" Charlie asked her, eager to move forward, thinking again of Claire and her baby. "I want to help those people…"

"You're welcome to join us if you're willing," Penny said. "And right now you're my only link to the island. You may have information that can help me find them. I've been searching for Desmond for three years now..."

"I want to help, I'm ready!" he said. "Can you pick me up here?"

"No," Penny said quickly, "Don't tell me where you are. It's…it's possible this call is being tapped. You should know this is not just a simple rescue mission. I have to warn you we're not the only people that know about this island. There…there may be _others_, Charlie. Desmond's time travelling was a result of this island's unique properties. It's one of their experiments. If we know that a paradox has occurred then these others will know too and I'm afraid they will come looking for you. They are desperate to keep the knowledge of this island a secret. You…you may be in danger."

Charlie thought of Karen and Meghan. If there were people after him Charlie wanted to put as much distance as possible between Liam's family and himself. It was time to leave.

"I'll meet you somewhere," he proposed.

"My team is quite good at finding people," Penny assured him. "Wherever you go we will meet you, but take extra care. Disguise yourself if you can. Be sure the others don't find you first. We'll be in touch soon..."

With that the line went dead. Charlie sat down at the table and stared at the phone, still reeling from the conversation. He lifted his head to see Karen hovering in the doorway, a frown creasing her forehead.

"Charlie…who was that calling you?" she asked, a confused smile teasing at her lips. "She sounded like a posh London girl."

Charlie hesitated. He considered trying to explain all he had just learnt. He quickly realised that Karen wouldn't believe him. And maybe it was best that she didn't believe him if that knowledge put her and her family in danger.

"It was an old girlfriend of mine," said Charlie. "Lucy Heatherton. We were dating for a while when I was living in London. She just called to say Happy Christmas."

"Calling you from England? Wow. She must be rich!"

"Yeah, she is actually…" Charlie replied.

Karen's smile lengthened. "Well, it sounds to me like she might still be interested in you. What did your therapist say, that once you have recovered you can look forward to having a girlfriend and a normal life again? See Charlie? If we can just get you better then you'll have so much to look forward to."

Charlie smiled reluctantly and nodded his head. Karen leaned down to kiss his cheek and asked if he wanted to come and watch TV with her. Charlie promised he would be through in a minute, so Karen squeezed his shoulder and left him alone at the kitchen table. Charlie sighed and clutched his head between his hands. He knew that he had to leave them, but he didn't wish to cause them anymore worry or pain. He had no idea how he was going to do this…

Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. Charlie blinked his eyes and saw Liam standing over him, his face gravely serious.

"Charlie?" he began haltingly. "I hope you don't mind but I was listening on the upstairs extension. I just…I had to hear it for myself."

Charlie sighed. "No, I'm glad you did. So now you know."

Liam nodded, "But…you're not going are you? You're still having all these problems and you need to look out for yourself right now."

Charlie looked at his brother in surprise. "Did you not hear what she said? It's the island! That's the reason why all these things are happening!"

Liam raised a finger to his lips and gave Charlie a stern look. Karen was watching TV in the next room and Meghan had only recently gone to bed. He clearly didn't want either of them knowing about this business. And that was the one point he and Charlie agreed on. Charlie took a breath and let Liam have his say.

"I think right now you'd believe any explanation someone gave you," said Liam, in a hushed voice. "It doesn't make it true. How can a bloody island cause you to do these things? It's not even possible."

"Liam, you have to trust me on this…"

"Well, you don't make it easy for me, baby brother. I know you threw away those pills they gave you at the hospital. I found them when I was clearing out the bins. It's like you're not even trying to get better. And now you're swallowing this woman's story whole without even considering the possibilities…"

"There are no possibilities!" Charlie hissed under his breath. "This is real, Liam. It's happening, and I'm supposed to save them."

"_You_?" spluttered Liam, in desperation. "What could _you_ do?"

Charlie's face fell. For a moment his brother sounded like the Liam of years ago, when he had convinced Charlie he was useless without the band. Liam had put him down his whole life, told him he would always need his big brother to get by, but Charlie wasn't buying it anymore. He knew what Liam was trying to do now, it was a last ditch effort to manipulate him into staying, but it wasn't going to work this time.

"Don't do this Liam," he said softly, forcing himself to remain calm. "I'm trying to protect you. If I stay then you, Karen and Meghan could all be in danger. These people might target you in order to get to me – I couldn't live with myself if that happened. I appreciate everything you've done for me, Li. I mean that. This isn't forever. I'll see you again, I promise, but I have to do this..."

Charlie glanced at his brother again and it seemed like Liam was regarding him with fresh eyes. He wasn't looking at Charlie like he was useless or even crazy. He was looking at him with respect and an almost fearful awe. Maybe it was Charlie spelling out that Karen and Meghan were in danger that had finally caused it to sink in. Because at long last it seemed that Liam was taking him seriously.

His older brother sighed, defeated.

"Here you are taking responsibility for something and I'm trying to stop you," Liam muttered shaking his head, a grim smile on his face.

Liam reached under the table and clasped his brother's hand.

"Charlie, if you really are in some kind of danger…and I can't help you then…then please do what you need to do to protect yourself…and protect them."

The brothers flinched. Karen was laughing and calling to them from the living room. Apparently there was something hilarious on TV which they were missing. Charlie turned back to Liam who was staring Charlie firmly in the eye.

"I'll be gone by morning," Charlie told him in a whisper. "Don't worry. Penny's people will find me. They'll protect me. You need to protect your own family."

Liam nodded, stiffly. His eyes were glistening but he held his jaw firm, knowing that they would soon have to join Karen and pretend nothing was wrong.

"Look out for yourself, you hear?" Liam said tightly. "Take anything you need. Money, food, protection…I'll cover it with Karen."

Charlie felt his eyes stinging with tears too. "Thanks Li. Thanks for believing in me."

Liam and Charlie shared no more words, but returned to the living room where they forced themselves to laugh at Karen's TV show. The three of them went up to bed an hour later. Charlie hugged them both on the landing with Liam hugging him like he didn't wish to let go. But finally he did let go and went reluctantly to bed with his wife while Charlie slipped into his own room. He quietly pulled a bag out from the closet and started gathering clothes from his drawers. He suddenly remembered Penny's suggestion that he disguise himself and quickly redressed in a plain black T-shirt and dark navy jeans.

When all was quiet in the house, Charlie crept downstairs with his backpack. It took him ages to find where Liam had hidden the scissors and razors. Once he located them at the bottom of the stationary cupboard he took them into the bathroom and stood before the mirror. Charlie narrowed his eyes on the dark roots of his blonde hair. Taking a deep breath, he took the scissors in hand and started cutting. He trimmed his hair until it was less than an inch in length then he lathered up his face and shaved away his beard. He blinked at his clean face and cropped hair in the mirror. Even he could barely recognise himself.

Charlie returned to the living room. He remembered Liam's offer about taking what he needed. He didn't have any money of his own. With a guilty wince, he took Liam's wallet from where it lay on the mantel piece and lifted Karen's handbag from a nearby chair. He filled his pockets with their loose change and took one of Liam's credit cards, which he decided he would keep in case of emergencies and post back to his brother after he met with Penny. He also took a can of pepper spray that he discovered in Karen's bag; the closest thing to a weapon.

Charlie then lifted his rucksack and headed into the corridor. He took his brother's leather jacket down from the pegs and slipped it onto his shoulders. The coat smelt like Liam and Charlie found that comforting and reassuring. Something clunked against his chest so he patted the inside breast pocket and discovered a pair of dark glasses which he supposed would be handy when day broke.

Charlie was about to step through the door when he heard a light pattering of footsteps behind him.

"He's here! He's here!" a voice whispered excitedly.

Charlie turned to see Meghan scurrying down the stairs with her toy bunny nestled in the crook of her elbow. When she saw him by the door however, Meghan halted, her eyes gaping and her jaw dropping as she took in his strange new appearance. Charlie raised a finger to his lips and then came to squat down in front of her.

"Were you expecting Father Christmas?" asked Charlie.

Meghan nodded, still seeming bewildered.

"Sorry Megs," he apologised. "I haven't got any presents for you. Except…" struck by a sudden inspiration, Charlie took off his Driveshaft ring and placed it in her palm. "Would you keep this safe for me?"

She looked down solemnly at the ring in her hand and then she looked up at him querulously.

"You're going away?" she asked him.

"Yeah," Charlie admitted. "I have to."

Meghan nodded with an instant understanding and acceptance that Liam and Karen had never granted him. Charlie smiled at his niece. Her eyes were round as Aarons and her hair was yellow as Claire's...

"You've got to promise me something, Megs," he said softly. "Don't worry about me while I'm gone. Look after your mum for me, yeah?"

Meghan nodded again and then reached her small arms and wrapped them around his neck. Charlie closed his eyes and squeezed her back, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat. After a moment, he pulled back from her embrace carefully, giving his niece one last smile and then he stood and walked out, shutting the door behind him so that he couldn't look back.

_TBC_...


	9. Chapter 8

**Characters**: Charlie, Penny, Donovan, Matthew Abbandon, mentions of Liam, Claire and Desmond.

**Author**: falafel-fiction

**Authors Note**: I would like to say a huge thank you to everybody who has stayed with this story and read it all the way through to the end. It's a very long story and me, pace and sapphire really appreciate you giving it your time. Thank you for all your wonderful feedback! This is the last chapter I'm afraid, though this story also has an epilogue which I will be posting very soon. I hope you've enjoyed the ride! On a side note, I would also like to appologise to anyone who is struggling to read the early chapters of this fic without scene breakers. FFnet in their wisdom have decided to eraser the use of dash lines as markers which has ruined the presentation of all my stories (Grrrr). Sorry about that. I hope it still makes sense!

* * *

Charlie spent most of Christmas Eve night in a local church. They had been hosting Midnight Mass when Charlie walked by and he had decided to slip inside to attend the service. He lit candles for each of his loved ones, both on and off the island, and then sat in a shadowed corner of the church whispering quiet prayers to himself. When mass was over, a priest came to him, perhaps sensing that he was in trouble, and offered to take his confession. Charlie politely declined, but asked if it would be okay for him to rest in the church doorway until morning. The priest regarded him with sympathy and gave him a blanket.

When first light dawned Charlie started his long walk from the suburbs into the city centre. He couldn't really think where would be the best place for him to make for or how the hell Penny's team were supposed to find him. But he decided that he should stick to busy pedestrian areas with lots of people milling around. That had to be better than wandering around in a lonely part of town where he could easily be kidnapped these _others_ that Penny had warned him would be looking for him. Charlie shuddered and pressed on.

It was mid-morning when he reached the city and by then it was getting hot. Charlie took his leather jacket off as he wandered around Darling Harbour. He stood and paused there for a while, watching the clustered groups of families enjoying their Christmas celebrations on their boats off the pier. After a while that hard lump rose in his throat rose again. Charlie had always treasured Christmas as a time for family. Why did it have to be _this_ day that he was forced to leave them?

When he couldn't stand it any longer he trudged back into the city centre and before too long he came to a service station with a coffee club tacked onto the end. This was the first café that Charlie had come across which was open today. He hurried over to its door and joined the sad lonely collection of customers who were sitting at its tables.

"Coffee please," Charlie muttered to the man behind the counter. "No milk."

"A pommy eh?" the man noted. "You on your way to visit family or something?"

Charlie chewed his lip and looked down at his hands. He really didn't want to talk about families. He had left _two_ families behind him, one here, one on the island. But the man was still watching him expectantly, so he nodded stiffly.

"Hey, don't suppose you heard about that plane crash what happened a few months back?" the man asked him suddenly as he was pouring his coffee.

Charlie rolled his eyes. This guy really was hitting on all the best conversation topics.

"Yeah I heard," he muttered. "What about it?"

The man nodded towards the pile of newspapers on the end of the counter.

"I was just reading a news article about it this morning," he said. "Apparently they gathered up a flock of seagulls off the coast of New Zealand. One of them had a note attached to its leg – a note that said it was written by survivors of Flight 815, saying they were alive and living on some island!" The man shook his head, wrinkling his nose in distaste. "Somebody's sick idea of a joke, I reckon. They already found all the bodies, didn't they? I can't understand why anyone would write something like that. Haven't those poor families been through enough?"

Charlie didn't respond to him, but quickly snatched up the newspaper and his coffee and then seated himself at the nearest booth. His heart was pounding as he rifled through its pages until he found the article. As he predicted the newspaper was denouncing the bird's message as a hoax, but they had still printed out a copy of the letter in full. Charlie recognized the words and the handwriting immediately.

_To whom it may concern: We are survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. We have survived on this island for 80 days. We were six hours into the flight when the pilot said we were off course and turned back toward Fiji. We hit turbulence and crashed. We've been waiting here all this time--waiting for rescue that has not come. We do not know where we are. We only know you have not found us. We've done our best to live on this island. Some of us have come to accept we may never leave it. Not all of us have survived since the crash. But there is new life, too, and with it, there is hope. We are alive. Please don't give up on us._

Charlie remembered how he and Claire had been standing on the beach together as the sun set over the ocean. His mind was hurtling back to the first time when he had read Claire's message. Once again the pure simple words almost moved him to tears. He felt so proud of Claire. Her idea had worked! And even if the rest of the world didn't believe it, Charlie knew that they were alive and he wasn't giving up on them. At that moment he knew he would never give up until they were saved.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a woman stumbled against his table and Charlie's coffee spilt all over his chest and lap. Charlie yelped and jumped to his feet as the burning liquid seeped through his clothes and scalded the skin beneath.

"Oh my God!" the woman exclaimed. "I'm so sorry...I didn't mean..."

Charlie didn't wait around to hear the rest of her clumsy apology. He hurried to the toilets and locked himself inside one of the cubicles. He was whimpering under his breath as he grabbed a clump of loo roll and tried his best to clean up the stain that was now covering his jeans. It still looked embarrassingly like he had pissed himself. His skin was red and throbbing and his hands trembled uncontrollably. Charlie dropped the paper and sat down on the toilet seat, breathing raggedly and holding his head in his hands. He was a bag of nerves. It only took a stupid thing like a drink being spilled on him to shatter his composure. He told himself to get a grip. He couldn't crumble now...

...and then suddenly he sensed it.

There was somebody else in the toilets with him.

He wasn't sure how he knew. He didn't think he had heard the click of the main door. He just knew that there was another presence nearby and that presence felt very oppressive. Careful not to make a sound Charlie slipped off the toilet seat, crouched on the floor of his cubicle and tilted his head to look underneath the door.

There was a pair of feet in leather shoes a few inches from his eyes.

Charlie had to place a sweaty hand over his mouth to keep himself from screaming. He pressed his back against the wall of the cubicle, feeling like a cornered animal. Who was it that was waiting outside the door? Could it possibly be one of Penny's team? _No_, thought Charlie. _This feels wrong. It's one of them. They've found me first._

Charlie slowly rose to his feet and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, clasping hold of the pepper spray he had taken from Karen's purse. He had one shot at this. If he could take this guy by surprise, then he might have a chance of escaping. If he was overpowered, then he would be caught and God knows what these people would do to him. Charlie would never make it to Penny. If he never got to Penny he'd never find to the island. He took a sharp breath, pulled back the latch and threw the door wide.

Standing outside his cubicle was a tall black man in a dark suit. His eyes were wide and emotionless as they stared out of his high bald head. Charlie wasn't prepared for how tall he was. He barely managed to re-angle his arm in time. The man tried to turn his head aside but the spray caught him in his left eye. He raised his hands and staggered back against the urinals. It was only then that Charlie noticed the tall man had been holding a needle, which clattered onto the tiled floor as his hands flailed.

Charlie felt a chill of horror passing through him, but he didn't waste another second. He turned and bolted from the service station loos and darted through the tables of the cafe. As he ran towards the door the woman who had spilled his drink rose to her feet, blocking his path and holding out a fresh cup of coffee.

"I really am sorry, sir," she blathered. "Here…I bought you another..."

Alarm bells sounded in Charlie's head. He realised that this woman was probably one of them too. She had knocked over his drink on purpose to get him into the toilets where the creepy tall guy could drug him and abduct him. In a burst of fury, Charlie shoved the woman aside and sent the coffee cup flying across the floor in a spray of coffee. He reached the door and pushed it open, only glancing over his shoulder momentarily to see the woman and the man behind the counter staring at him in dismay.

"Yeah…Merry bloody Christmas to you too..." Charlie sneered at them.

Charlie didn't stop running once he was out on the pavement. He had little idea where was running to or how best to protect himself, but he felt he had to keep moving. The roads before him were desolate. There were wide silent gaps stretching between the cars. Charlie tried yelling and waving his hands desperately at the few motorists that drove passed him, but the only response he got was some disturbed glances through the windows before the drivers increased their speed.

Clearly these people were all on their way to a nice family Christmas and had no interest in stopping for deranged hitchhikers. Charlie kept running, not even daring look over his shoulder now. He feared he would see a car following him, a car filled with dark suited people. He could imagine this car overtaking him, its passengers stepping out in front of him, surrounding him and sedating him, before smuggling him into their vehicle, never to be seen again.

Then out of nowhere Charlie caught sight of his salvation. A taxi with its 'For Hire' sign illuminated was cruising up the road towards him. Charlie hailed the cab frantically. When it pulled up on the curb beside him, he practically dove onto its backseat.

"Go, go, go!" Charlie yelled breathlessly to the driver. "Please! Get me out of here."

The driver chuckled softly and then took to the road again, heading back into the city. Charlie looked out of the rear window to see if any suspicious looking cars were tailing them. He couldn't see anything yet.

"You can't escape from it, mate," the cab driver said to him.

"Wh-what?" Charlie stammered nervously, confused by the remark.

"I know what it's like," the cabbie continued. "Your relatives annoy the hell out of you, those cheesy bloody songs on the radio are wearing on your nerves, you've probably forgotten half the presents you were supposed to buy...but it doesn't help to run away from it. You can't escape Christmas mate – you just have to ride it out."

Charlie smiled weakly at the drivers attempt at humour. He reached into his pockets again and clasped his hands around Liam's credit card. He really didn't want to use it, mainly because he feared he could be traced through it. But Charlie desperately needed to be in a safe public place right now.

"Take me to a hotel," he instructed. "Any hotel that's busy this time of year…and has lots of bloody security on its doors," he added.

"Whatever you say, mate..." the cabbie said smoothly. "I know a good one at the top of town."

Charlie nodded and slumped back against the leather seating. He let out of a sigh of relief, allowing his eyelids to droop closed. When he got to this hotel there would be plenty of normal people around -- people who would surely come to his rescue if any creepy strangers attempted to kidnap him from their premises. There would also be coffee at the hotel. Strong coffee. He could drink strong black coffee, sit in the lobby in front of reception and wait for Penny's team to find him. He just hoped that they would arrive for him before his exhaustion took over and he gave way to sleep.

Charlie was dimly aware that the cab driver was speaking to somebody on the taxi radio. He didn't listen at first. Then he realised that his driver was speaking in a hushed voice, as if he didn't want him to hear. Charlie frowned and cracked his eyelids, straining to listen to the voice speaking on the other end of the line.

He couldn't make it out at first. There was too much static.

Then suddenly he heard it very clearly.

"...is our target acquired?" asked the voice.

The driver glanced at Charlie in his rear view mirror, a smile on his lips.

"Yeah...I got him," he replied.

Charlie's eyes became wide. He felt his blood running cold. His face was twitching with shock and disbelief. The driver was one of them too! _Jesus_. How big was this conspiracy? What the hell did these people want?!

"Just relax, Charlie..." the driver said, still smiling. "You'll soon be..."

"Let me out of this bloody taxi!" he yelled in a panic.

Charlie grabbed at the nearest door handle and started tugging it, only to find that it was locked from the inside. He banged and kicked at it in his desperation, continuing to scream demands that the taxi driver let him out immediately. The driver sighed and pulled over onto the curb. For a moment Charlie thought that he was actually going to release him. Then he turned around to look through the back window. Two men were hurrying up the street towards the taxi. One of the men held some sort of phone or radio in his hand which he was quickly stuffing into his jacket pocket. Charlie watched as the two men parted ways, rounding the cab to the passenger doors on either side of him.

Charlie braced himself. These men were blocking his escape. He tried to estimate which of the two guys was smaller. _The bloke on the left_, Charlie decided. _He looks like he might be rather skinny under his jacket. I might be able to knock him down..._

"Hey, take it easy..." the driver was telling him.

Charlie wasn't listening. He scrambled away from the door on the right. When the left side door opened, Charlie lunged at the man in his path, raising up his knee and kicking the man sharply in the groin, dropping him to his knees. Charlie shoved him aside, climbing out of the car and then staggering out onto the road. He looked around frantically. The car had turned onto a narrow side street. The road was silent and deserted. The buildings that surrounded him were warehouses.

Charlie's heart plummeted.

Nobody will even hear me scream here, he thought.

Before Charlie could even try, a hand reached around him and covered his mouth. There was something soft and moist held inside its palm; a chloroform pad that was being firmly clamped under his nose, its sharp scent drowning his senses. Charlie moaned and struggled, but another arm looped his waist, securing his arms to his sides. He quickly grew limp and dizzy. He slumped back against the man who was holding him, his heels dragging over the tarmac as he was pulled back towards the car.

"Sorry about this, Mr. Pace..." said a voice in his ear.

* * *

Charlie felt the haze clearing from his mind. He blinked his eyes and found he was lying on a sofa, a blanket thrown over him. He wasn't restrained or tied down so he took that as a good sign. He turned his head to the right. There was a woman sitting on a chair beside him. He recognised her instantly from Desmond's photograph.

"Penny?" he murmured, groggily.

She smiled and nodded, handing him a glass of water.

"It's good to meet you at last, Charlie Pace," she said with a polite nod. "I'm dreadfully sorry for having you kidnapped."

He shrugged. "I've been kidnapped worse."

When Charlie said this he was thinking of the time Ethan had dragged him and Claire into the jungle or when the women in the Looking Glass had tied him to a chair and interrogated him. He began to realise that those memories from the island were as real to him as the memories he had experienced in this world. In some ways those memories were more real. His other self was still alive in him.

Charlie sat upright on the couch. He took the water Penny offered him and drank it down in gulps. The water took dryness from his throat and cleared the last of the fuzziness from his head. He tried not to think of drowning.

"You know my team almost didn't recognise you with that new haircut," Penny informed him. "They tried to tell you that they were bringing you to me, but you were panicking. There was no time to explain. They needed to get you out of the city fast. They weren't the only ones searching for you this morning."

"Yeah, I gathered," said Charlie, shivering as he remember the tall creepy man in the service station toilets. "What time is it?"

"A little before midnight. I'm afraid you've spent most of Christmas unconscious. Nobody wanted to wake you though. You looked like you needed the rest."

"So where are we now?" Charlie asked.

"This is one of the safe houses used by my team. We have them on the outskirts of most major cities. Don't worry. Nobody will find us. Even so we shouldn't remain here long. I've a private aircraft that will take us back to London tomorrow."

"London?" he spluttered. "My brother, Liam, I need to call him..."

Penny frowned, her expression pinched with regret.

"It isn't safe to contact him at the moment, Charlie," she said. "I'm sorry, but the less your brother knows the safer he and his family will be. If you wish to protect them I'm afraid you must let them believe that you have...gone missing." She winced at her own suggestion. "I know that this is hard. I promise you once matters have settled down we'll try to send a secret message to Liam to let him know you are safe. But we can't let him know of your whereabouts. Not until all this is over."

Charlie snorted. He had been greatly relieved when he had found he was in the care of Penny's team, but it still seemed he was entering a life of secrecy and captivity. It appeared that he wouldn't be allowed to leave the house or even make a phone call without their permission.

He started to think of Liam and Karen. He imagined the police would tell Liam that the last place his younger brother was sighted was a café near the harbour where he had been throwing coffee cups and raving like a lunatic.

A café by the harbour...most likely the police would suspect that his depressed and delusional brother had committed suicide, throwing himself from the pier into the ocean. The story would be that Charlie Pace had drowned. He would be a victim of drowning in both his worlds. Charlie knew that Liam would support this story in the public eye. He would have to. If he told the truth then this _other_ group would target him and his family for information just like Penny was warning him. Charlie hoped that behind closed doors Liam might at least tell Karen of their secret. But either way Charlie wasn't sure if he would see either of them again.

"As long as they're safe," Charlie said quietly. "I don't know what's going on here. But I don't want my family getting dragged into it, alright?"

"Of course," Penny answered respectfully. "You should eat."

Penny reached for the side table beside the coach and handed him a sandwich on a plate. Charlie was still feeling weak and sickly after his strong dose of chloroform but his stomach was rumbling with hunger. He took the slices of white bread in his hands and smelt their corners.

He raised an eyebrow. "Turkey sandwiches?"

"With cranberry sauce," said Penny with a faint smile. "Christmas has come at an odd sort of time, hasn't it? You slept through most of it. I myself have been flying across the world. I haven't had any time for feasting and presents. Apart from the gifts I received two days ago…the transmission from the Looking Glass station and then the phone call from the boat. Those were the best presents I've had in years..."

Penny released a happy sigh. Charlie wanted to ask her more about these 'gifts' but he still had his mouth full. Suddenly a door opened on the far side of the room. A studious looking Indian man stepped into the room.

"Ah!" the stranger said brightly. "I see that our little time-space anomaly has woken up. Excellent! We have much to talk about..."

"Donovan, don't start," Penny scolded gently. "He's had a rough couple of days. Just let him eat and relax and then we'll..."

Charlie slammed his sandwich back on the plate.

"No, I want to talk about it," he insisted. "Really, I want to know what is going on. I don't think I'll even be able to have a good night's kip until I understand this..."

Donovan looked pointedly at Penny.

"Shall we show him then?" he suggested.

Penny threw a concerned glance at Charlie, but seeing the determination in his face, she gave a reluctant nod. She crossed the room to the television set in the corner and placed a disk in its player. She turned back to Charlie.

"This is a recording of the transmission I received from the island…" she explained.

Without further ado, Penny pressed the play switch. Charlie shuffled forward on the sofa and squinted at the monitor. He could see nothing but a cloud of static at first. Then slowly a crackling voice broke through the fuzz…

"_Yes! Yes I can hear you…Charlie! I'm Charlie Pace. I'm a survivor of Flight 815. Oceanic Flight 815. We're on an island…we're alive…"_

The static cleared and suddenly it was like Charlie was looking in a mirror. He jumped up from the couch and fell to his knees before the TV. For the first time he was seeing his other self. The Charlie from the island. The Charlie who was dead.

He looked skinnier, a little famished from his island diet. His hair was damp and filthy, his fringe plastered over his forehead. His skin was dappled with cuts and bruises. His lower lip was badly swollen. But aside from all this the Charlie on the screen was grinning and wide eyed as he stated that Desmond was with him.

"_He's here! He's here with me. He's brilliant! Hey…are you on the boat? Your boat. 80 miles off shore. Err…Naomi. Parachutist…."_

There was the murmur of Penny's confused reply. Then Charlie's smile faded and was replaced by a frown. Suddenly he turned and leapt out of his chair, distracted by something in the right corner of the screen. In the next moment, he darted out of shot. Then came a rumbling explosion…followed by blackness and silence.

Charlie looked away, wheezing, feeling shaken to his core.

"The transmission just cuts off," said Penny. "We're not sure what happened to him after that…what caught his attention. Can you shed any light for us?"

Charlie nodded solemnly.

"He...he drowned. He's dead. He was in an underwater station. There was a porthole window that was blown open. The room flooded with seawater. Pretty soon it rose over his head and he...he drowned." He looked at Penny. "Desmond's fine. I closed..._he_ closed the door of the comms room, sealing off the rest of the station from the flood. The last I saw Desmond he was safe on the other side. I think...I think that I told him...somehow...that it wasn't your boat."

Penny swallowed. "You saved his life. Thank you."

"I'm not the one who saved him, love," he replied flatly.

"Why would your other self shut himself inside?" Donovan asked, confused. "Couldn't he have sealed the door from the other side and survived?"

Charlie shrugged, impotently. "He knew that he was gonna die anyway. Desmond kept having all these visions of him dying. _Flashes_ we called them. They came every few days. Desmond kept saving my life...or _his_ life rather, but it wouldn't stop. I think that in the end he just wanted to die on his own terms, you know? He wanted to sacrifice himself to help his friends…"

Charlie blinked as he came to a realisation.

"If...if Desmond hadn't saved me for so long...you guys wouldn't have found out about the paradox. We never would have made contact, right?"

Donovan waved his hand interrupting his point.

"Charlie, back up a little…you say that Desmond was having visions of your other self dying?" Charlie nodded and then Donovan beamed, as if he was coming to a revelation of his own. "Of course! Paradoxes are very dangerous and unstable. The universe can only sustain them temporarily. It has to course correct. It has to put the timeline back on track. Charlie, I believe Desmond _did_ time travel. When he spoke to you on the street he altered your path. The universe needed to eliminate your original existence to allow for this alteration."

Penny shot Charlie another sympathetic look as Donovan got to his feet and began pacing the room in a flurry of intellectual excitement.

"This truly is remarkable!" he exalted. "This is incredible!!"

"Yeah…wonderful," Charlie muttered. "I'm so delighted to be involved in this miracle of weird science. Excuse me if I don't jump for joy, but as you can see..." Charlie pointed an angry finger at the black screen, "…_I'm dead!_"

"Yes!" said Donovan turning back to him and fixing him with an intense gaze. "But Charlie – you are also _here_."

_TBC_...


	10. EPILOGUE

**Characters**: Desmond and Faraday with mentions of Charlie, Penny and Donovan.

**Author**: pacejunkie

**Authors Note**: Yup, this is the end for now I'm afraid. I hope that this little switch of perspective gives the fic some satisfactory closure. I know a lot of you were pining for a reunion scene and this isn't it, but just to let you know sapphire is considering writing one. She might need to have to have a little breather from it first though! Thanks again for sticking with this story everyone who made it this far!!

* * *

_EPILOGUE – THE ISLAND_

Desmond's return trip from the freighter was mercifully uneventful. Overjoyed, he felt as if he could have floated back on the clouds alone. Penny still loved him, and she hadn't stopped looking for him. He still couldn't believe he had spoken to her, although the warm tones of her voice still lingered in his ear like gourmet cuisine on a palate, feeding his weary soul as water restores a drought ridden land. It was only when he and Sayid returned to the beach camp and the familiar tents and cooking fires that the giddiness began to wear off. Desmond realised what a task Penny had set before her. How would she ever find this island when he didn't even know where the bloody hell he was?

After a welcome home handshake from Jack, Desmond asked after Daniel, the odd physicist he had spoken to on the phone and visited in his past. Jack pointed down the beach to where the Oxford professor stood in the kitchen area with the red-headed woman whose name escaped him. Desmond wasn't too bothered; he felt lucky to recall his own name after what had happened. He had learned quite a bit about what had happened on the boat but was still in need of answers, particularly having to do with why this was all happening to begin with. Why did Desmond have these flashes, travel through time, become 'unstuck' as Faraday had put it? The trip to the freighter had not had the same effect on Sayid, and although Desmond knew it had to be connected to his previous time travel experience, he still lacked insight into the actual cause.

The red head walked away as Desmond neared. When he was within a few feet Daniel looked up and broke into a curious smile and a sigh. He seemed relieved to see him, almost too relieved, as though Desmond were his best mate despite having just met him.

"You're okay!" Daniel exclaimed.

Desmond ignored the response and plunged right in. "I want you to tell me everything you know about what's happened to me."

When Daniel recovered he nodded vigorously, clearly anticipating Desmond's curiosity now that the danger had been averted. "That's...kind of a tall order. I'd like to ask you some questions first if that's okay. It might help me to answer yours."

Desmond nodded and the two sat down at the bamboo table. "When was the first time you remember time travelling? Was it on the island?"

"It began with the Swan station, an underground hatch in the jungle where I lived for a while," said Desmond, thinking. "There was…an incident, a build-up of electromagnetism. The station had a computer that released it but it was broken so...I had to turn a fail-safe key. I thought I'd died, but instead I woke up and it was 1996. I was back in my old flat, even though I could remember everything that had happened on the island."

Daniel didn't seem surprised or sceptical of any of this, but instead he looked at Desmond as though he were considering something. Glancing over his shoulder, Daniel spied the redhead lass several tents away talking to Jack. Satisfied, he jumped up.

"I want to show you something, Desmond," he said. "Wait here."

Desmond shrugged and waited until Daniel returned a moment later with a black leatherette notebook. Daniel rifled through the lined pages full of diagrams and equations until he came to a page somewhere near the middle and stopped. Then he turned the book towards Desmond so he could read it. The undated text was in capital letters and red ink, boxed and underlined.

_If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be __my__ constant. _

"What the bloody hell's this?" Desmond asked, "Some kind of joke?"

Daniel was smiling. "I assure you Desmond, it's no joke. It's happened to me too. I was exposed to large doses of radiation in my research, as we talked about at Oxford. I knew you might be here, and I knew that on this island, time travel was possible. I also knew there was a chance of becoming unstuck getting in or out of here. I came to the island hoping to find you to anchor me."

Desmond couldn't believe what he was hearing. He began to wonder whether Daniel was the reason Naomi had his name and photo; in all the confusion he never did get that question answered on the freighter.

"How did you know I was here?" he asked.

When Daniel answered him, the physicist delivered the second sucker punch of the day, growing more excited by his own tale by the minute.

"Donovan told me, after you told him," Faraday said. "He was a colleague of mine in the Physics department at Oxford. Most people there thought I was crazy but he was strangely fascinated by my work. Finally one day he told me why. He told me about you."

It was so neat it was almost obvious. Of course, his friend was also an Oxford physicist. Desmond ought to have made the connection himself. But the answer only raised more questions, namely how Donovan could have acted on something that he only knew because Desmond had travelled back in time and told him.

"Does that mean by going back, I changed the future?" Desmond asked, remembering his encounter with Daniel in his 1996 research lab. "When I saw you at Oxford, you said we couldn't change the future."

"You can't, not exactly," Daniel explained, his eyes lifting up to the heavens, searching for the right words to explain. "The universe prevents it, it's like…"

"…like course correcting?" Desmond filled in.

Dan looked down again, surprised. "Yeah. How did you know?"

"I met someone, in my past, someone I didn't meet before. She was an older lady that worked in an antique shop and she knew my name and all about the island. She explained about course correcting." Desmond thought back to the white haired lady who liked roasted chestnuts and added with a small smile, "I didn't believe her."

"How did she know all those things?" Daniel asked.

"Don't ask me brother, you're the scientist. Maybe it was happening to her too," said Desmond.

Daniel waved off that mystery for the moment. "Besides telling Donovan about the island, is there anything else you did differently when you travelled into the past?"

Desmond thought hard. "I did a lot of things. I was hit with a cricket bat meant for a bartender, and…" he stopped as the words caught in his throat with sudden realisation, "and Charlie. I saw Charlie."

"Who's Charlie?" asked Dan.

"He was one of the plane crash survivors," Desmond explained hurriedly. "When I was in 1996 I saw him playing guitar on the street and I spoke to him. He didn't know who I was. He just thought I was some nutter going on about an island."

Daniel nodded, following easily on his own little train of thought. "After that happened and you returned here, did Charlie remember the meeting?"

"No, he…"

"Did he have any side effects at all?" Dan interrupted.

Desmond felt like he had been hit in the face with a sledgehammer. Charlie bloody well _did_ have side effects. After Desmond returned, the universe had made it its primary purpose to kill the poor sod.

"Desmond?" asked Dan sharply, trying to bring his attention back, "Where's Charlie now?"

"He's dead," said Desmond in a hollow voice, eyes staring off into the distance towards the frigid ocean that had claimed him. "After I returned from the past I began having these flashes of Charlie's death. I'd do something to prevent it and then the next day I'd see another death and then another. They were always about Charlie. Oh my God, could that be it?"

He turned on Daniel, more desperate for answers than before, but the more he learned the more his anguish grew.

"Did I cause this?!" He demanded.

It was all making sense in the most horrible way imaginable. It had been him. Desmond had been responsible for Charlie's death, but not in the way he had first thought. He had been beating himself up over his decision to tell Charlie about the rescue helicopter. By telling him he saw Claire and Aaron get rescued, Desmond had convinced Charlie to swim down to the station, face his death and cause events to happen on his own terms. Desmond was already living with that guilt, but it was even worse than that. It now turned out that he had started the whole mess happening in the first place.

"Actions in our past can have enormous consequences," Dan explained, his voice steady and even in an attempt to calm him. "It's like a ripple effect. You couldn't have known what would happen when you spoke to him on the street. Whatever you did caused the universe to eliminate Charlie from the island."

Desmond thought of the young man with a girlfriend and child and the death sentence he had unwittingly brought upon him, "But why? Why would it do that?"

"There's only one reason for course correcting, and that's to prevent a paradox," Daniel said. "Let's say, for example, the Charlie you spoke to in 1996 never got on Flight 815. But time isn't linear it's more like a spiral so…" he stopped and dropped the hands he was using to illustrate his meaning, and then tried again. "Charlie was already here in 2004 when you saw him in 1996. The universe can't have two Charlie's living parallel lives, and eventually it will find a way to course correct, particularly if it thinks the two Charlie's may one day intersect. They can't ever be allowed to meet each other."

Desmond struggled to follow, "But if Charlie had to die, that would mean…"

"That Charlie _may_ still be alive, but off the island," said Dan. "It's a possibility. And if he's out there somewhere Desmond, he may be trying to get _here_. At least that would explain why the course correction suddenly began to take effect when it did."

"And Penny spoke to him," Desmond realized with a burst of comprehension.

"What?" asked Dan.

"I spoke to Penny on the freighter – my constant – and she said that she spoke to Charlie and is trying to find me. Charlie spoke to her from the underwater station here just before he drowned. If Charlie's name is all she had to go on she may have found the Charlie that's still in London."

"Now remember, this is just a theory, Desmond," Daniel cautioned. "We don't know anything for sure yet."

But Desmond didn't care. He still felt elated, rejuvenated by the mere possibility. The burden of responsibility hadn't lifted but he now had something he hadn't had apart from his few moments with Penny on the phone – hope. If Charlie was still out there, helping Penny find the island, there was hope, not only for him but for Claire as well. He thought of the young single mother who had collapsed before his eyes upon hearing the news of her friend's tragic death. Perhaps he hadn't destroyed a family like he thought he had. Desmond shook Daniel's hand with vigour and left him, perplexed in the dust, as he walked off to face a new day.

It was just like Brother Campbell had said all those years ago. Desmond had underestimated the value of sacrifice. He had long failed to see the reward in it, but here, finally, the reward was clear. Charlie had made the ultimate sacrifice, a necessary step to bringing about not only their salvation, but also Charlie's own.

If only Desmond had known that Charlie didn't need saving. The lad may have saved himself.

_Maybe that was it,_ he thought as he reached the three sided bamboo and tarp tent that had begun to feel like home, _maybe that was Charlie's destiny._ _Here I was thinking he had to die for Claire and Aaron's rescue to happen but that was only part of it. He had to die so he could live, and rescue us all._

THE END


End file.
